


In The Margins of Another Life

by ravensandwritings



Category: Lupin III, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Zenigata-keibu (mini-series)
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, And discard the rest, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Blood, Body Horror, Car Accidents, Car Sex, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Chase/Capture Kink, Coming Out, Compromise, Dinner dates, Disguise, Drinking, Forgiveness, Found Family, Frank discussion of sex, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hanahaki Disease, Heist, Hospice, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love Confessions, Love Letters, Lupin III: Part 4 + 5, Lupin's Past, M/M, Makeup Sex, Marriage Proposal, Masks, Medical, Mental Health Issues, Minor Arsène Lupin III/Fujiko Mine, Minor Goemon Ishikawa/Jigen Daisuke, Minor Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III, Oral Sex, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Police, Reconciliation, Regret, Retirement, Scattered other pieces of canon, Snooping, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporarily Unrequited Love, The Old Girl and the New Girl, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine - Freeform, This is Lupin we use what we want, Trauma Recovery, Wibbly Wobbly Canon, Zenigata-Keibu (live action), big reveals, cuckold kink, love is a verb, suffocation, the BeeGees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:22:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 74,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensandwritings/pseuds/ravensandwritings
Summary: When a disaster heist leads to a vengeful curse, leading to a spiritual illness, Zenigata is left weighing the longing of his heart against the value of his life. There is a cure, he's told, but it may be worse than the disease. Hard choices bring him and his longtime rival, Lupin III, to see things in a new light, realizing that there's more to each other than they previously realized. But will they be realized before it's too late?
Relationships: Arsène Lupin III/Zenigata Kouichi
Comments: 80
Kudos: 221





	1. The Stink of Failure

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah I totally wrote a fic during a pandemic about spiritual disease that suffocates you to death. Timing, right? 
> 
> If this is a big deal for you right now (which is understandable) maybe skip this over. There will be some unflinching description of disease and injury in this fic which may be triggering for people dealing with Covid-19 or other serious illness.

It was a fucking disaster, if he said so himself. Coughing as engine smoke billowed up from a wrecked police cruiser, Zenigata Koichi looked over the mess of a half-foiled heist: gardens bearing the mark of the Fiat's tread, fencing and part of a building smashed to splinters, and one fire. It was beyond disaster, he amended. This was a cultural site massacre.

As the dust settled, he turned back to the shrine that had been central to the failed crime, grinding his teeth. Legendary thief, Arsène Lupin III hadn’t gotten the objective of today’s daring daylight theft: prize winning cultivars of the shrine's sacred camellia bushes. Instead, in an act of petty theft, he and his partner Jigen had made off with the donation box after they destroyed the camellia bushes that had been their original goal. 

Police were beginning to cordon off the scene, working to retake control of the space in the aftermath. Zenigata stood in the middle of the storm of activity, the seething thunder at the heart of it.

“Sir!” His assistant, Yatagarasu Goro, got his attention with a shout. He came over, before he bowed deeply in apology. “I’m sorry. We didn’t predict--”

“I know what we didn’t predict. Ishikawa Goemon shouldn’t have been here. This isn’t his style - he rarely participates in thefts that can result in damage to sites of Japanese cultural significance...unless it has a connection to the Ishikawa family history. So he was here.”

“But we researched--”

“And we missed it, whatever it was.” Zenigata grumbled. Junior mistake. He was better than this, Goddamn it. “No matter. They didn’t get what they were after. They just… ruined it instead.”

“The plants, sir?”

“The plants, the shrine -- this will take years to fix!" He swept out one arm, surveying the scene before him. "Years for plants to be regrown, years for repairs, years for people to feel safe again. He botched this one, and people that aren’t Lupin III will pay the price, as always.”

Yata lapsed into silence, standing by his mentor and superior. Zenigata could feel his nervous energy, knew in his heart that Yata was doing what he did at that age: promising himself this wouldn’t happen again. They’d stop the thief, they’d win this war of attrition, and Lupin would see justice.

Zenigata didn’t feel that right this second. He just felt the ball of ice that was dread settling low in his stomach. This was an all around failure. A disaster. What a damned mess.

“Go start sweeping for witnesses,” he said, trying to focus on work. “We need to get a bead on where Lupin was headed and where he might go to ground.”

“Yessir!” A snappy salute broke Yata free from his stillness, and he rushed off to obey.

He was a good kid. Smart, capable, willing to listen to the crazy plans that Zenigata came up to counter crazy thefts. He’d be a worthy inheritor, if it came to that. 

Herding his thoughts back from dark places, he focused on the job. He went to find the priest, a thin old man starting to bend under the weight of age. His robes hung from his arms like the boughs of willow trees, threatening to reach further and further until they were dragged over the earth. He was standing at the edge of the garden.

“Kannushi-san, please accept my humblest apologies,” he began, bowing as low as Yata had bowed for him. “While Lupin did not succeed in his theft of your sacred camellias, he caused even more damage. I’m sorry we did not do more to prevent such widespread wreckage.”

The priest made a small sound of sadness, soft and barely audible. “It is what it is. This place has always been a site of grief. I just hope we can assuage the kami within and re-sanctify this sacred space. She is a vengeful kami, indeed.”

That icy dread shot up from Zenigata’s stomach to curl around his spine. “What do you mean?”

“This place is the site of a woman’s suicide. She killed herself because she was due to be married to a man while she pined for another. Her family married her to a man she did not love, while she pined for a ronin wanderer,” the kannushi replied. He bowed his head, eyes down as he told the story of the kami’s tragedy. “She found no rest, though, and her spirit lingers. That’s why the camellias are so important. It’s said that they bloomed around her as she breathed her last. They gave her, perhaps, some sense of peace. Lovers here come to make offerings to her, so that they may be spared parting from their beloved, or gain the eye of someone who doesn’t see them as they wish to be seen.”

Zenigata didn’t like a single word of that. He’d bet his great ancestor’s zeni that if you dug back deep enough, you’d find out that the ronin was an Ishikawa. Had that been the angle for Goemon, to avenge a death of a love denied? It would appeal to Goemon’s sensibilities, his romanticism. Lupin was hardly the only one of them prone to giving in to the saccharine or sentimental. 

Goemon, Jigen, even Fujiko-- they all had the things that made them soft, and sometimes even weak. Goemon couldn’t say no to a woman, and Jigen would say he couldn’t but would fold for the right set of sad eyes against all better judgment. Fujiko guarded her weaknesses the most fiercely, because her errant lover and his companions that made her foolish in the moment. 

“I hope that the work here goes swiftly, for your sake and hers,” Zenigata said, sending up his own prayer for her peace, as well as a thank you. He had the clue he needed to explain the missed detail that might’ve warned them that Lupin would bring Goemon along, instead of just his constant partner and right hand gunman, Jigen Daisuke. He’d have to dig into the archives, ask a friend to do some research, if just for a complete report.

“Thank you,” the holy man replied. 

“I must take my leave to continue to investigate where Lupin may have fled to. Hopefully, we can at least retrieve your donation box.”

The kannushi said nothing, though he nodded his head. That was all the acknowledgement that failure deserved, Zenigata supposed as he took his leave. He couldn’t stand the smell of crushed bushes and pulverized blossoms, and standing in the stink of it was starting to make his throat feel tight. It was the season for allergies, and standing in a ripped up garden couldn’t be helping matters at all.

Work and stopping at an honest to god ramen-ya to clear his sinuses would be good for him. He’d have to ask Yata if anything new had popped up in the area so he could eat his fill and savor some hometown cooking.

***

“Are you sure it’s seasonal allergies, sir?” 

It wasn’t the first time Yata had asked, but Zenigata was going to be damned if he left Japan before things were taken care of. He had to make sure victim services started to work with the shrine to find money for repairs days after the botched theft that had left it in ruins. If Zenigata didn’t take care of them, who would? Insurance company? Theft by Lupin was practically an act of God. Nobody wanted to cover anything surrounding the thief. 

“It’s fine, Yata. I just--” he coughed, pushing his face into his elbow to make sure he didn’t spray everywhere. “I just-- maybe it’s just a spring cold. Tail end of flu season.”

“Maybe, sir.” Yata wasn’t so quick to agree after the fifth time Zenigata had made the excuse.

Whatever it was, it was coming on strong. At least he was home instead of Europe. The best healthcare was Japanese healthcare, if you asked him (not that anybody did.) Zenigata considered penciling in a meeting with a physician, but the idea of being in a hospital made his skin crawl so hard it wanted to flee off his body and hide in one of his coat pockets, never to be seen again. He hated the damn things, and he saw the inside of clinics far more often than he’d like. Terrible things happened in hospitals, when he was round. He was bad luck for medical professionals -- just ask his ex-wife.

“I’ll get to it,” he said, pushing back all the bubbling unpleasantness that threatened to come up his throat and make him cough again.

“Get to what sir?”

“Oh-- nothing, never mind, Yata-kun.”

The work and the nasty cold went on like this for a few days. The aftermath was the least enjoyable part of the job. Sheaves of manila folders, each with some piece of information to be filed, some form to be filled out. His trusty, battered Namiki pen was going to need to be re-inked soon, lines getting scratchier, railroading as he filled out expense forms in triplicate.

The cough made it worse. It had started a tickle in the back of his throat, congestion spreading to his chest. It was growing more and more aggravating daily, until he was coughing hard enough that he’d put his cigarettes aside. What he lost in coughing was almost made up in nic fitting, battering at his eroding patience like a storm at sea. Yata had suggested a nicotine patch on the fifth day, and he’d almost been desperate enough to take it.

On the sixth day, he finally made an appointment to see a doctor. It made Yata calm down at least, but Zenigata’s irritability mounted with each passing day. Everything was annoying; the sound of the radio from another office down the hallway or Yata going out to vape and coming back smelling like cookies or root beer or some other idiot thing. If you were going to smoke, commit, he thought. Don’t do things in halves, or pretend the vapor was safer or whatever bullshit they were selling to people now. He smoked high tar short filter Shinseis and liked them. He had, on rare occasion, even picked up Lupin’s favored brand of cigarettes, short filtered French Gitanes. He had been wondering what about their taste drew Lupin to them specifically, or if it was simply some bit of odd national pride that kept him with a brand from home. They were fine, he supposed, but at home he had Shinsei cigarettes readily available. 

When the local police found the donation box on the side of a road, empty except for a note with a piece of paper with a shrugging Lupin Bean and ‘ _Better luck next time!’_ written on it, there'd been a discarded blue cigarette box with it. Zenigata had put his foot through an empty file box as soon as he saw those damning words in his email. Better luck for _who,_ exactly? Zenigata, holding the bag for Lupin’s crimes, or Lupin, whose great theft turned into petty pennies ripped from priests?

On the tenth day, the doctor’s office was just as awful as expected. Sterile smelling, with the same useless waiting room music. It was more comfortable than European or American hospitals and clinics, but that didn’t stop him from seeing his ex-wife in every woman in scrubs.

He tried not to think about her when a smiling young woman took him back to get the basic vitals, and then put him into an exam room once all the biological minutiae was collected and collated. Height, weight, blood pressure, age, frequency of drinking and smoking, if he was sexually active -- all the things he hated to divulge. He was a private man, even if he didn't have much of a private life.

His doctor, thankfully, was a man a few years Zenigata’s senior. His hair was thinning and graying. Zenigata’s hair was definitely going gray but his singular nod to vanity was keeping his hair black as pitch, dying it as needed. There was always some green youth that noticed the gray spreading from his temples and fanning back behind his ears and saw a lagging member of the ICPO herd, ready to try and thin him out. The Europeans were terrible about that kind of attitude. Grasping climbers, the lot of them.

They learned the hard way that Zenigata was healthy as an ox -- today’s visit being an exception to the rule -- and wasn’t going to lose his place to someone who’d barely made inspector a year previous. He was Zenigata Koichi. He was on the Lupin case, and he’d be the one to close it. 

“So you’re having some difficulty in your breathing? Coughing and chest congestion?”

Zenigata gave a perfunctory nod. “Yes. It’s been persistent for the last week.”

“Why didn’t you come in earlier?”

“I’m an ICPO inspector. Important case.” Even if it was just cleaning up Lupin’s mess, helping people make sense of what happened and what they could do to recover was as equally as important as slapping cuffs on the thief. 

“I see. Hard worker. Lots of stress.” The man’s small eyes scanned his paperwork. “I see you’re a heavy smoker, too.” 

Zenigata bit his tongue on a tired response and instead said, “I haven’t had a cigarette in nearly a week, but the cough has only gotten worse.”

The doctor came closer, gesturing for him to straighten up so he could listen to his lungs. The sudden chill radiating out from the press of a stethoscope triggered a cough-- this one worst than the rest. Maybe it was that he was vulnerable here, that he wasn’t constantly on guard, but this time it bent him half, folding him up like a cheap lawn chair.

The doctor put a solicitous hand to his shoulder, keeping him from going off the edge of the exam bed. His chest just kept squeezing the breath out of him, like his body was ready to collapse inward on itself. His eyes started to water, tears clinging to his lashes.

What was probably a few minutes passed, but when he could finally get air back in his lungs Zenigata was light headed and unsure of just how long had passed. The doctor was speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear him. He was looking at a brilliantly red camellia in the crook of his arm. He blinked, and then realized it was just a spatter of blood against his dark skin.

“We’re going to have to run some tests,” the doctor said, and Zenigata didn’t protest. There was blood in his mouth. There hadn’t been blood before now. “I want you to take it easy. No stress. Absolutely no field work, Zenigata-keibu. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said, looking at the damning spatter.

Yata could handle the paperwork, and he could allow himself some time to rest. He’d be fine by the time Lupin made a move again. Maybe the stress had tanked his immune system, leaving him vulnerable to a thief of his health instead of the brilliant criminal that usually shaved a few days off his life during every heist.

Frankly, he’d rather have Lupin steal it than a cold.

  
  


***

In a tiny, closed up ramen-ya in a small town in the Yamanashi Prefecture, Arsene Lupin III laid on his back and groaned a little at his phone as search after search yielded him nothing.

It was late March and while it was warming up, Lupin longed for the vacation that they were supposed to be having right now. They were not vacationing, because the weird occultist he knew -- a friend of Fujiko’s -- that had wanted the stupid temple flowers in the first place was irate over their damage, so there’d been no fat payout since there'd been nothing to deliver. The donation box, which had been taken mostly to fuck with one Zenigata Koichi, hadn’t even had 500 yen inside. The job was an utter bust, and he hadn’t heard the end of it all week.

Lupin's partners were all showing their displeasure in their own ways. Goemon had fucked right off to go be a samurai somewhere in the shade of Mount Fuji, and Fujiko had vanished immediately into a cloud of irate loss since she’d been the one to arrange the job in the first place. Lupin was left with a cranky Jigen who had moved past the first couple stages of post failed-heist grief and had settled into something like resigned acceptance of the situation. He remained a cranky bear to live with.

Lupin, however, was leashed and collared in the dog house. With Goemon and Fujiko both gone, and Jigen spending more time outside the hideout than in it, he was left idle. There was little companionable talk, not a lot of good humor, and Lupin knew he’d have to actually plan a bigger and better heist fast to make it up to his partner.

They weren’t flat broke -- they never were, though Lupin didn’t always have his money liquid -- but it was tight enough that belt tightening had to be done. He was smoking cheap ass Shinseis, without a single Gitane pack to be found here in the sticks. There wasn't a good import store for miles. He did make sure to get good whiskey for Jigen with what was left of their spending cash while he pored over current events for jobs they could do fast and locally to pad out the wallets.

So far, he was turning up with bupkis. They might have to wait a while for things to really start opening up, when sakura viewing was in full bloom. People would be coming out, galleries would be putting out new spring collections, museums would be having new exhibits and the rich would come down from their winter haunts to enjoy the warming weather and spend a lot of green. The first fruits of warm weather would be ripe for picking.

“You don’t look like you’re planning anything,” Jigen said as he returned, closing the back door of the ramen-ya behind him. “Still right where I left you when I went to get lunch.”

“Jigen-chaaaaaaaaan,” Lupin started right off with the whining. “This is our dry season! We need to wait for spring to get up and going.”

“We gonna ride out March in this heap?” Jigen asked as he set food on the small table they’d dragged into the back. They had their table and a couple of battered couches in the dining area, and were storing gear and equipment in the kitchen.

“I mean, it’s quiet and safe, why not?” Lupin asked. 

“What happened to the place in Nagano?”

“Pops busted that one three years ago.”

“Okay, what else is close? Chiyoda?”

“That is literally where he lives, Jigen.”

Jigen stopped pulling food out of the bag he’d brought. “I thought he lived in Tokyo.”

“That’s where he stays when he’s working,” Lupin supplied helpfully. He didn’t really know much about Zenigata’s personal life except the pieces he needed to know. He didn’t need much else, since Zenigata Koichi didn’t really have a life outside of his work, as far as Lupin knew. “Chiyoda’s his hometown. Even I know better than to go looking for a place to stay in a place where the Zenigata family is well known. His ancestor’s enshrined as a kami up there, my friend. I’m not courting disaster like that!”

“Are you saying you’re not up to the challenge?” Jigen asked, and Lupin was certain his brows had gone up under his hat, even if he couldn’t see them. “That you’re afraid of the old man’s neighbors knowing you? You been slacking on the disguises that much, Lupin? I mean, after the last job maybe I can believe it.”

“Alright, I get it! I get it!” Lupin sat up, the better to throw his hands up in defeat. “I’m sorry the camellia heist was a bust! I’m trying to find us something that’ll be better than just lunch money, okay?”

Jigen snorted once, before he finished setting out the take away lunch he’d brought back. “You better.”

“I will,” Lupin said as he came to the table. He sat down heavily and rested his chin on both palms, elbows on the table. “Just not in Chiyoda. There’s nothing worth stealing there, anyway.”

The idea of tweaking his so-called rival’s nose had some merit, but he’d already done so by liberating the donation box from the temple. That had just been a moment of petty bullshit on Lupin’s part and he knew it. 

Right now, they needed liquid cash, and they needed it soon, otherwise Jigen would get impatient. An impatient Jigen was a Jigen that went and found other work, and other work sometimes led Lupin’s boon companion getting into trouble. The last thing they needed, right this moment, was more trouble. 

He cracked open his take-away rice bowl, picked up his chopsticks and dug in. Maybe he’d think better with a full belly. Something would come to him, something important. Something precious beyond measure. Something that would keep him in fun money for weeks and weeks, letting them finally get a vacation somewhere sunny.

Something out there in Japan was worth stealing in the next four weeks. He just had to find it. 


	2. The Taste of Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zenigata is seeking both answers and the capture of Lupin. Both of those things can come with a very high cost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, here we are again with a trigger note. One I never expected to need to write. The day the first chapter of this fic was posted was the day after George Floyd's death. We had no idea how big this would get, but it was a long time in coming. I personally had a riot break out 5 minutes from my home, and watched as local police tear gassed both journalists and protesters. These are not good cops. ACAB was in full effect.
> 
> However, this is a story about a cop. A fantasy cop, where cops are good people, root out the bad cops, and fight for justice. Right now, it might be hard to read about the type of cop that doesn't exist in real life. When I was plotting this fic, Covid-19 was just starting to be a problem, so I included a warning about that. When I post this chapter, people are being assaulted by the very people who should be protecting them. That's not right.
> 
> In light of recent events, I don't think it's fair to not say something at this time to warn people about what they might be reading. In this chapter, Zenigata talks about what happens when cops are heartless, and what that makes them into. This might be hard to read for some, or it might be just what someone else needs. I don't know. 
> 
> What I do know is Black Lives Matter, systemic racism is real, and we need to do better.

Seven days later, Zenigata was hiking up a hilly path to the shrine that Lupin had failed to properly rob. He put down one step after another, pebbles and dirt grinding under his battered service boots. 

Seven days later, he had no answers regarding his condition. He’d been called in for breathing tests, X-Rays, bloodwork, and finally a biopsy where they’d slid a tiny machine into his lungs, burrowing into him like a worm to grab tissue for testing. Though they’d numbed his throat to prevent coughing and he could still breathe, the taste of surgical steel had lingered in his mouth to mingle with the blood. It remained a persistent symptom pointing to a much larger problem. 

Cancer was the lurking shadow cast over the whole affair. They hadn’t found any masses, any blurry blots that might indicate a tumor. Still, he hadn’t tasted a cigarette in almost two weeks, and wondered at the power of such a tiny pleasure leading to such a terror. No time for regrets, though, especially not when he was bent in half, one hand on a tree and the other trying to keep the blood to the plain white kerchief he was now forced to carry.

When the fit passed, he wiped the blood from his mouth, the cheap cotton growing rougher with each use. The rest of the blood he had to force back down his throat. He couldn’t spit here, not after everything that had already happened. It would just be further affront to this holy place, so he choked down the nasty film coating his mouth and trod onward.

The repair work had finally begun. There were a few citizens here, shrine-goers, priests, young women who might serve as miko. Several looked at him as he covered his mouth again to cough. When he had enough air, he asked where he could go to find the priests.

The senior priest was out in the garden, working the earth with his own gnarled hands, knobby knuckles catching softened soil in every crack and wrinkle. 

“I was concerned I might see you again,” the priest said as Zenigata respectfully knelt in his presence.

“Why’s that?”

“You’re diligent, hardworking. Admirable traits. Probably make good money, don’t you?” The priest’s smile returned, mild and thoughtful. There was no joy in the curve of his mouth. Just a sort of resignation, the way a cynic is pleased to be proven right.

“I guess that’s true, yes,” Zenigata replied. “But why did you think I’d return?”

“Two reasons. You’re not a man to leave things as they are. To not make sure that we are recovering. Your dedication is a fine trait,” the priest said. Then he looked up at Zenigata from his work. “Yet you’re unmarried. A workaholic life, perhaps? Nothing but the job.”

“I-- I’m divorced, kannushi-san,” Zenigata stumbled over the admission. None of that made a lick of sense to him. Why was being divorced a tip off?

“Ah. Can I ask why?” 

“I was never home,” he said, choking down a swell of bitterness that had nothing to do with blood. “Neither was she. Mistakes were made.” 

“The kind of mistakes married people make when they never see each other, Zenigata-keibu?” the priest asked.

“If you’re asking if I cheated on my wife, kannushi-san, then-- yes. I did.” He looked away. He had his flaws, same as any other. They’d just hurt someone who had never deserved such betrayal. “She did the same.” 

“Who first?”

“Me.”

“I see. What’s the saying, then?” He put it out in heavily accented English, but the phrase was one Zenigata had learned well in his time surrounded by Europeans. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?” 

“Something like that.” Was this what Catholic confession was like? Pouring out your sins to a relative stranger? It makes the film clinging to his palate all the more sour. “I got lonely on the road. She got lonely at home. I didn’t-- it wasn’t about falling in love with someone else. It was… it was being tired of empty hotel rooms. Of feeling like a stranger everywhere with nothing to return to, empty hands and empty beds. It was the same for her. We both found colleagues, we both fell into bed with them. But I felt guilty, and I confessed.”

“You seem like the type who, when he makes a mistake, is quick to remedy that error. Proud, but not unwilling to put your forehead to the ground if that’s what it took.” Zenigata wasn’t sure if the priest was giving him a compliment. “So she left you then?” 

“Not until I got drunk and did it a second time,” Zenigata said. He wasn’t proud of his weaknesses, the mistakes he’d made, but he wouldn’t lie to the priest about it.

“Ah!” The single exhale signaled some sort of moment of clarity. “A heart full of longing for connection.”

“Or a libido that should have been controlled,” Zenigata grumbled to himself, before he directed his attention back to the priest. “It doesn’t matter why I did it, does it? I can’t see the reason behind this line of questioning.” 

“Because you  _ yearn _ ,” the priest said, looking over the rows they’d dug to replant the surviving camellia bushes. “You’re a dreamer, Zenigata-keibu, with a big heart. I saw you with a dream crushed -- Lupin uncaptured, a place in ruins. That’s your nightmare, isn’t it? Just doing that over and over again. You want something more. Something different.”

“I certainly don’t want him traipsing all over the world, carefree on other people’s money!” 

He didn’t expect the laughter from the priest. “No, I suppose you don’t. Do you want it to be over so you can mend things with your ex-wife? Or did she make good with her colleague?”

“No.” The question threw him right off center again. “She…. She’s single, as far as I’m aware.”

“Do you miss your wife?”

“Yes-- but-- no!” Sputtering in outrage became coughing, and coughing finally got the priest to move; the smell of earth and loam nearly overpowered the taste of blood, and surprisingly strong hands kept him upright.

“Shh, shh, breathe. Ah, it took root fast in you, didn’t it? The longing you feel must be terrible,” he was saying, and Zenigata did not understand a word of it. He didn’t long for anything except Lupin’s capture, and that definitely didn’t have anything to do with his wife.

Fumbling with his kerchief, he put it to his mouth and coughed into, bringing up gobbets of blood again. He spat, spat again, until his mouth was clear and the kerchief was ruined. 

As he straightened, the priest gently shook his shoulder. “Look at it,” he urged. “Look at it and tell me if there’s a camellia there!”

Zenigata didn’t understand the question, but opened his fist. Sure enough, crumpled by the kerchief was a bright red camellia. But it withered in his hand, turning black and going ashen, until it had shriveled and blown away.

Something reached up from inside him and took him by the throat. Something that wasn’t blood.

“Kannushi-san, what’s happening to me?”

“It’s as I feared,” the priest said, sitting next to him to overlook the garden’s ruins. “I told you, our kami of the camellias is most vengeful, and you-- with a heart full of longing, you are exactly the type of man she’d seize in her grip.”

“That doesn’t make any damn sense!” It was going to be cancer, he thought. Not some damned rambling about kami. Kami didn’t kill people. At least, not in any direct, measurable way.

“It does to me. It happens when something displeases her.” He jerked his chin toward the garden, absent of plants and only just having the earth turned and restored. “Hurting her camellias is a sure way to do it. She lays a curse on them; to die as she did, poison choking her to death, longing for a love that cannot be.”

“I didn’t hurt her camellias, Lupin did.”

“You drove your cruiser right after him, didn’t you?” The priest lifted his bushy brows. “Crushing more blooms under your tires in the chase after your man, yes?”

Zenigata’s heart sank, as the guilt he’d pressed down wiggled free to strike at his heart. “Yes. I-- that’s true, yes. I couldn’t let him get away! But why isn’t he cursed?”

“I don’t know. He might be. He might not. But what is yearning to a thief?” The priest shrugged his shoulders, helpless before his own question. “It is nothing. They do not long, they do not pine. Want, take, have. That’s all that matters. But you’re a man who dreams, who longs, who hopes. You’re a fertile garden in which her seeds take root.”

“That can’t be so!” 

“It can be. I thought, perhaps -- there was someone. Your ex-wife, perhaps. Someone your work has denied you, or society, or whatever barrier exists between you and this object of affection.” The priest told him, looking at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “But there is a heart yours yearns for, a beat you wished you matched. There is someone who makes your heart sing, Zenigata-keibu.”

“That’s nonsense. I’ve put that all behind me.” Zenigata folded his arms over his chest, looking away. “I don’t even-- I haven’t taken a lover in years. I’m too old for that garbage. My world doesn’t allow for romantic notions.”

“No? Is that really true?” the priest said as Zenigata stuffed the ruin kerchief in his pocket. “An officer of the law, unbowed and unbroken by his profession, tied to justice instead of order. You are kind, and compassionate. I can’t say I would trust just any police officer with my family, but you-- I would trust  _ you.  _ I’d say you’re not just romantic, you’re an idealist.”

“Compliment notwithstanding, this is madness. I can’t be cursed.” What an absurd notion, Zenigata thought. The camellia that had been in the palm of his hand had to have been a trick of the light, an illusion from a feverish mind. “The simpler answer is that I’ve been smoking since I was sixteen. Over thirty years of cigarettes caught up to me. The inevitable, you know? We all die sometimes. If this is what kills me, this is what kills me.”

“What if I told you that you didn’t have to? That there was a cure for the camellias?” 

Zenigata climbed to his feet and rolled his shoulders to straighten the hang of his coat. “And what does that mean?”

“The flowers spring from your heart, and push into your lungs,” the priest said, gesturing upward like one might visualize a deadly bouquet extending from one’s throat. “They choke your breath away until you suffocate, and you die. You can bring them up, but more will grow in their place. Only you and your beloved can see them, Zenigata-keibu, and they don’t last very long once they’re no longer rooted in your heart.”

“So what cures them?” He didn’t know why he cared what could fix what didn’t exist. “Please, kannushi-san, get to the point of this!”

“You have three options: confess to your beloved. If your feelings are truly reciprocated, the curse within you withers and dies, and you’ll be back to normal in days.”

Back to the nonsense again! Zenigata spat out, “To hell with that! I’m not pining for anyone.”

“Not that you’ll admit, yet, no.” Unperturbed by Zenigata’s anger, the priest continued. “The second is to reject your own heart. Deny your feelings, and I will cut your heart out. Not the organ-- but the spiritual heart of you. You will lose the ability to love, but you will survive, if as a changed man.”

Zenigata swallowed hard; he knew what men with power and no heart did. He had ruined the careers of no less than five Interpol commissioners and several bad agents, and taken down corrupt and brutal cops besides. To become a hollow shell of selfishness seemed worse than dying, it would be to become what he’d striven against nearly all his life. “And the third?”

The priest bowed his head, as solemn as a funeral. “Die slowly, in pain, either because the person you love does not return your feelings, or because you cannot or will not tell them what’s in your heart.”

“Bah!” Zenigata threw up his hands. He was trying not to yell, but slowly losing that battle as he got more and more heated. “I’m not in love with anyone, and I don’t pine like some stroppy teenage girl. The only thing I want in life is to be a good cop and bring Lupin to justice!”

The priest rose, dusting off his knees as he went. “If that is what you chose to tell yourself, fine. Would you have me cut your heart free, then?”

“Even if what you say is true, even if this purported cure to a curse was real, would you ever think I would want to be the type of man who’d have his heart ripped out? Lose the ability to love?” Zenigata paced now, needing to move. His throat itched, scratching each word as he spoke. “How could I be kind? Compassionate? How could I make good judgment? A cop without compassion is just a bully of the worst sort, the kind with a badge and a gun. The world doesn’t need any more of those!”

“I can’t disagree,” the priest said as he watched him pace. “So you have two options: Confess and hope to live, or choose to die.”

“There is no one to confess to!” 

“That’s a lie the heart often tells to protect itself from what it can’t have.”

Frustration forced its way up and out of Zenigata. He gave a wordless shout, a cry at injustice, against foolishness, against his own rebelling lungs. When he tried to get his breath back for another tirade, he began to cough again.

It wrenched at him until he was stumbling, one hand out to catch himself on one of the remaining beams on the shrine before the garden. He heaved, trying to get air into his lungs even as every muscle clenched to squeeze it out, making it so there was no room for anything except burning pain. 

“Zenigata-keibu!” The priest was shouting his name, he heard it but his head was swimming and he couldn’t place where he was. Pain shot up from his knees, and only then did he realized they’d buckled and brought him to the ground. Everything was thunder and lightning, ripping through him great white streaks that blinded his eyes and left only the sound of his blood rushing in his ears.

This time he couldn’t stop himself from spitting; something fell from his mouth, and then another, sliding slickly over his spittle-flecked lips. He was being maneuvered, he realized, to lay on his side, his head resting on something. The kannushi’s knee, perhaps, or something else.

As he resurfaced from the pain and air started to come into his lungs again, he looked at the mess he’d left on the planks: a pile of small blossoms, brilliantly red until their petal’s edges turned gray and began to crumble.

He closed his eyes and refused to see.

  
  


+++

  
  


Sake sat untouched before Zenigata in a small bar frequented mostly by Tokyo Metro PD. Zenigata wasn’t touching in anytime soon, as it had basically been ordered as a courtesy for taking up space. Instead of drinking, he had a list to make.

It had been over a year since he’d visited Todai, but he knew a word to the staff would allow him in for his yearly pilgrimage. His former mentor Hanshichi had retired to Hawaii and while Zenigata could reach him, there’d be no point. He was very old, and the news would only upset him. There were letters to write for his ex-wife and daughter. Things to make ready, wills to update, his journals to record whatever time he had left.

Didn’t matter if it was curse or cancer, it was best to be prepared for it if something really did happen. There were amends to make, ancestors to be honored. He wondered if he should contact his sisters, and then thought better of it. They wouldn’t even bother to take a call from him, and he couldn’t honestly blame them.

Someone threw a jacket over the back of the chair next to him, and sat down. 

“Sake,” said Yata.

Zenigata waited as the bartender got his assistant a drink. Once the younger inspector was settled he asked, “You come looking, or just got lucky?”

“Our phones, remember? We set that up--”

“Ah, yeah, the phone location share,” Zenigata waved it off one handed. He’d forgotten all about it - a way to stay connected, even when dealing with the pursuit of Lupin. “I remember.”

Yata nodded a little and then sipped at his drink. Zenigata looked at his list, before he laid his big hand over it.

“Why are you here?”

“You’ve been ducking my calls, sir.”

“I’ll be back to the office soon,” Zenigata said. 

“That’s not what I mean, sir.” 

Yata matched his quiet after that, and the plateau of quiet stretched onward and onward, a trembling plane of silence that neither dared breach. It was stretching and taut, neither man looking at the other and instead, staring into their cups.

Yata swallowed hard, forcing down whatever he was feeling, and finally asked the simple questions. “How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Are you returning to duty?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as I’ve got, Yata.”

Yata bowed his head, looking into his drink like the answer to his unasked question would rise to the surface of the pale liquor, an oracle into the secrets of the universe. When no such answer came, he looked at Zenigata.

“Is there anything I should be doing, sir? To help you?”

“Do your job, Yata-kun.” He had to be firm. The boy’s admiration was all well and good, but the job was what mattered. Lupin would be caught, one way or the other. Perhaps he’d even get to see it himself, though he doubted it’d be his hands on the cuffs the next time.

The young man stayed quiet, and said, “What if Lupin goes to ground for a while? What will you do then?”

“He won’t,” Zenigata said, as sure as he knew his own name. “He’s hurting and he’s got no money. It’ll be a matter of professional pride to get back out there and get himself a win. Not to mention, Jigen will walk if he doesn’t. When Lupin fucks up, Jigen looks for steady money. Sort of a reminder -- that he could walk at any time, even if he never would.”

Yata tilted his head for a moment. “Why do you say that?”

Zenigata laughed, and tossed the rest of his drink back. “He’d never leave for good. He loves Lupin far too much for that. But he’ll threaten. He’ll threaten and then he’ll get himself into trouble and Lupin will come running.” 

Yata looked at him for a moment, before he turned away. “I didn’t realize their--ah, relationship. It’s not in your files, sir.”

“Eh, some things just get penciled in the margins, Yata-kun.” Zenigata said, as he took up his own notepad and pocketed it. He got up from his chair, pulling his own coat from the back of it. “The world doesn’t need those details. He’s loyal to Lupin, that’s all that matters.”

“I see,” Yata said, watching him. “Where are you going, sir?”

Where was he going? Not to Todai, it was too late. Home was empty and lonely, the perfect place for late night bad choices that involved a trip to the liquor store beforehand. He could go make other bad choices, he supposed, but was too old to pick up women and couldn’t trust himself to be able to breathe if he actually got anywhere with one.

“Home,” he said, finally. “Eventually. I have errands to run.”

Yata looked at him for a moment, before he reached into his suit coat, and pulled out a brilliant red and white card. 

Zenigata sucked in a breath and held it despite himself. The card looked like a beacon of salvation, a balm to his battered heart. Finally, something that made sense.

“Are you sure you want to go home?” Yata smiled, thin and wan. “Or do you want to go set a trap for Lupin?”

“Why didn’t you start with that? Goddamn it, we could have been on the road for the last ten minutes!” Zenigata snatched the card from his hands, ignoring that he’d startled the entire bar with his outburst.

Passing by shocked and confused faces, Zenigata rushed for the door. If it was his last shot, by God, he was going to take it and make it count. 

+++

The Fiat was going as fast as it could -- without kicking in the secret boosters, anyway -- when Jigen asked, “Is he  _ still _ on our ass?” 

“If he wants to get that up close and personal, he better pull my hair while he’s at it,” Lupin replied, standing on his seat and halfway out the sunroof. “The old man has some real pep in his step tonight!”

The heist was not, in fact, a total loss. The notice had been sent about the precious Ikebana displays that would feature famous pottery from a Korean artist, a rarity in Japan.  Goemon had bailed because he was still mad about the last job going completely tits up, but Lupin and Jigen had made things work without him… right up until Fujiko had intercepted them and taken off with the loot. Again.

He still had a few trinkets in his pockets which would get them back to Europe at the very least, and keep them fed until the heat was off. But the old man had been down right brutal in his pursuit. There was no joyous grinning, no locked eyes across a crowded museum, no _ I’ve got you this time, Lupin! _ Something about the whole thing stank, but Lupin didn’t have time to really analyze whatever it was. They were too busy racing back through the curving coastal roads, taking the hairpin curves and switchbacks to try and shake the old man off their tail. 

Zenigata’s retinue of cops had fallen to the wayside long before now. Lots of cruisers ruined, property damaged, the best part of a heist gone right was knowing that the lawmen were gonna have to pay a pretty penny to pick themselves back up after he was done with them. A nice bonus for a job well done. There were probably one or two stragglers still following after Zenigata’s cruiser, but they’d never catch up in time to matter. They’d be to the port and their waiting escape boat in no time, and Zenigata would be left with nothing but water and sky to yell at. 

He was hanging out the sunroof when he heard the sudden roar of an air horn and bounced to the side hard when Jigen swerved. Ribs aching, he held on tight as they watched the tanker barrel around the corner, airhorn still blaring.

Then the whole of the thing shuddered, dust and grime flying off it like water off a wet dog. Brakes screamed into the seaside air, and inertia sent the tank to the side while the cab of the truck tried to maneuver in the narrow roars and tight curves.

“Jigen. Jigen! Binocs! Give me the binocs!” He waved his hand down under the car roof, only to have the binoculars shoved against his palm. “Slow it down!” 

He brought the binoculars up, trying to see past the black smoke and plumes of dust that had been ripped up from the road. They were a blot on the horizon, marring an otherwise beautiful coast in the evening, soaked in pinks and purples.

“Lupin! Did he hit the tanker?” 

“I don’t know!” he scanned the horizon again, trying to find any evidence that the police cruiser hadn’t been flattened into a police matchbook instead. “I can’t-- the smoke, Jigen. The tanker hit something, but I can’t see through the smoke. No idea if he got hit, but that thing just swept across the whole road!”

“Fuck it.” Lupin was lurched again as Jigen sped and flipped the car around like it had spun on a dime. “We’re going back.”

“Do it,” Lupin said, dropping back into the car. He dove into the back seat, rummaging around for the medical kit they carried. Thieves had to always watch out for the greatest thief of all -- death itself. Being prepared was a must. No way was Pops getting snatched by the thief of life on Lupin’s watch. The man had saved their asses on too many occasions to simply leave his survival to chance.

“Plan?” 

“See if they were hit, and if so how bad. If either of them are hurt, get them out of their cars and to a safe distance,” Lupin said as he slid back into his seat, folding his arms over the now most-precious cargo. “First aid stuff from there. No idea what’s in that tanker. Could be milk, could be petrol.”

“And if he’s fine?”

“Moon him and run, obviously.”

Jigen let out a sharp laugh. “Let’s not waste any time, then.”

The smoke forced them to slow when they entered it, coughing as the heavy clouds of it rolled over the sunroof and made its way into the car. They had to stop and get out to cross over the tanker, taking care about climbing around the semi cab.. Finally they passed through it and found both the cruiser and the cab on the other side.

Despite it all, the trucker had the devil’s own luck, and his cab was still upright, though the tank he’d been hauling had twisted on itself and was now blocking the road, part of it hanging over the cliffs over the ocean. The cruiser had not fared nearly as well. The car had hit the side of the cliffs in an attempt to swerve and halfway folded over on itself, the driver’s side a crumpled mess. The passenger door had been kicked off completely, and there was movement from within the cab.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” French Catholicism rose up like an ugly specter from his youth, old cusses slipping past Lupin’s lips. “Someone’s moving in the cruiser!”

“Smoke smells like petrol, Lupin, let’s make this quick.”

“Go get the driver. I’ll see to Yata and Pops!” 

“Got it, boss.” Jigen gave him a little salute, and both rushed to their respective jobs. 

When he got closer, he ducked to look under the crumpled roof of the car. “Please don’t be dead and mangled,  _ please _ don’t be dead and mangled…”

“Lupin!” Yata’s voice was choked with relief, as the thief’s prayers were answered. Tears were already cutting paths in the grime on Yata’s face, gratitude plain. He was twisted in his seat, battered and bloody, but moving. Besides him was the old man, equally bloody, but too still for any comfort. “Please, Lupin, he’s not breathing.”

“Get out, I’ve got him.” Wasting little time in helping Yata out, Lupin took out the thief’s other most faithful tool -- a leatherman. Blades, scissors, screwdrivers, it was one tool for so many jobs! His was specialized, the blade sharp enough to cut easily through rope and other restraints. It passed through Zenigata’s seatbelt straps like the Zantetsuken might through the car itself.

Zenigata was a big man, bigger than Lupin, and completely dead weight. There was some wriggling and finagling, trying to keep his head from being bounced on anything but still sliding him out of the car as quickly as possible. 

“Yata! Grab his legs!” Lupin demanded, and Yata hopped to obey. He wasn’t a strong man, he left that for Goemon or Jigen, but by God, he would find it in his skinny arms and legs to heft the man that had seven and a half centimeters and God only knew how many kilos on him.

His legs protested every step of the way, but they got him what Lupin hoped was a safe distance away and set him down. As soon as he was set down, Yata shoved him aside -- checking Zenigata’s pulse in his throat, and then putting his ear to his chest. Finally, a tiny mirror was produced, held up to his nose. It didn’t mist.

“His heart’s stopped and his breathing’s stopped. You know CPR?”

“Goemon knows CPR!” Lupin said.

“Jigen?”

“Nope. Freaked out the last time he had to get it, too.” Lupin said, tearing at his hair. “Fuck! Wait, why don’t you know? You’re a cop! You’re a first responder, you have to know this!”

“I do! I just need to know how much I have to tell you to do! Get over here; you’re going to do chest compression.”

“I don’t know the pattern.”

“It’s simple,” Yata said, finally grasping something like calm as he knelt by Zenigata’s head. “Push to the beat of the BeeGee’s when I tell you to. You know,  _ Stayin’ Alive _ ?”

Lupin looked up at him, brows knitting up as he tried to wrap his brain around what Yata had just told him. “Is this some sort of joke to you?”

“Do what I fucking tell you to do! _ ”  _ Yata’s voice cracked hard, broken and raw underneath his usual calm. “Do it or he’s going to die, Lupin.”

They were both quiet after that; Lupin straddled Zenigata’s thick torso, a hard abdominal wall under his ass. The muscle was a counterpoint to the lovehandles that the big man had under Lupin’s thighs. Zenigata always was a bit of a contradiction, soft and hard in strange ways. Just being an honest cop made him something like a unicorn.

Yata cleared Zenigata’s throat with a swipe of his fingers, drawing back bloody digits. Then he tilted his head back, mouth open. “Begin compression. Fifteen, then stop. Like I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah -- Stayin’ Alive!” He mumbled the lyrics, half-remembered, and did as he was told. The BeeGees! Of all the thing to be rolling through his mind with Pops potentially dead beneath him, it was the fucking BeeGees. “Ah, ah, ah… Stayin’ alive. You better, Pops. You better!”

Fifteen compressions, and then Lupin stopped. Yata pressed his mouth to the inspector’s and forced air into his lungs. A series of breaths were given before he came up, putting his hand to his mentor’s neck.

“No pulse, no breathing. Repeat compression.”

“You sure are bossy,” Lupin said, but he did not disobey. Wisecracks didn’t break the stress, but he had to say something, and he could only mumble so many old lyrics. He was vaguely aware that Jigen arrived in the background, the trucker with him -- remarkably unscathed. Jigen said something about road flares, but Lupin didn’t have time to listen. He was too busy watching his knuckles go white with each downward push. Jigen left them behind, to go do something that was slightly less important than what Lupin was doing right that moment.

The next time Yata dipped and breathed, there was a cough and a bloody sputter. Yata came back up, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. Lupin brought his hands up into the air, afraid that if he pushed one more time he’d break something, that the hard won breathing would stop at any moment.

Zenigata’s eyes opened, rolled back, and closed. When he opened them again, there was that lock of gazes that somehow had been missed this entire chase. 

He had the grayest eyes, Lupin realized. Like storm clouds over the ocean.

“Lu… pin?” Zenigata weakly moved a hand, grabbing at the air. Lupin reached down to take it, putting it around his own wrist.

“Yeah, Pops. I know,” it was his turn to have his voice crack under the stress. Elation at success fell to the wayside as exhaustion hit him like a second tanker. “I’m under arrest.”

When the cruisers arrived, it turned out he really was.


	3. The Burn Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When more bad news comes, Zenigata hits the spiral of shame and depression. Three people come and go into his life; one that may have destroyed his career, one that had held his heart, and one that needed to make something right.

“What do you mean I’m on leave?”

Interpol Commissioner Andie Dupin, head of Special Divisions, of which Zenigata’s Lupin team was one, stood at the end of Zenigata’s hospital bed. A serious man with a pencil mustache and the Frenchest face a man could have in Zenigata’s estimate, Dupin was explaining the facts again for the third time in this visit.

“You are on medical leave, starting as of your check-in date,” he said and Zenigata heard the words but did not believe them. “It’s as close as suspended with pay as I can get right now, and I do it  _ only _ because you have been a valiant servant of the public trust for many years now, Zenigata.”

After being trapped in bed for five days with bruised ribs and a concussion that was finally going down, Zenigata could only sputter and protest. “Sir, that’s not necessary. I’ll be fit as--”

“As the man who has been seeing specialists for the last two weeks about a persistent cough that’s bringing up blood, Inspector?” Dupin’s eyebrows lifted, before he sighed. He dropped his tense posture and put both hands on his hips. “I’m doing this for your own damn good, Zenigata. Please don’t press this. You nearly got yourself killed -- not to mention your aide and a trucker. Did your lungs seize up while you were driving?”

“No! That’s not it at all.”

“I have reports to the contrary.” 

Zenigata’s teeth ground together hard enough to turn diamonds to dust between them. Yata had to have told them, which means they finally had the leverage they needed. They were going to take it away. The only thing that got him moving, the reason he got up in the goddamn morning. They were going to pull him off the case and put him out to goddamn pasture -- or send him to the slaughterhouse.

“You  _ can’t _ .”

“I can, and I am,” Dupin repeated. He stepped closer, reaching out to grip Zenigata’s shoulder as he sat there, staring at Dupin with empty eyes. “Koichi. If you can come back from this, then fine-- we’ll talk about having you back. But until that time, until you’re safe for the field -- you’re going home.”

“You flew all this way out to fire me.”

“Not fire. Put on leave.”

Dupin kept saying the same words, but all Zenigata knew was that his job was gone. There was nowhere for him to go now but home, now. No last minute Lupin thefts. No rushing to a plane. Just a taxi to Chiyoda and a house he hadn’t occupied in years, with the ghosts of the family he left behind to chase his career haunting every hallway.

His shoulders sagged under Dupin’s grip. “Same difference.”

“No. I told you. If you come back from this -- however long it takes, Interpol will welcome you back.” Dupin gripped his shoulder tighter, trying to hold him down when Koichi felt like he was going to crumble under the weight of Dupin’s hand. “No one will ever deny you worked at this harder than any agent that came before you, Koichi. Your team is one of the most requested across the world, your arrest rate is steller, and you are well liked. Japan  _ loves  _ you. Why would we throw away such an asset?”

None of that mattered. He didn’t do the work for any of that recognition, any of that praise. He reached for another thread, all the same. “Yata’s not ready.”

“I know.” It was gently phrased, but admitted a terrible truth. “But he’ll do his best, and he’ll grow. Might be time for Lupin to give him some direct lumps for a little bit, so he can really learn. You can’t keep training wheels on for him forever, Zenigata.”

Dupin said a few more things after that, but Zenigata didn’t really hear any of them. When no answers were forthcoming, the conversation came to a halt, and Dupin excused himself once he realized Zenigata had no more words for him. 

Zenigata sat there for a time, unsure of how long had passed. The sun had been shining when Dupin had left, a fine April day mocking him.. The cherry blossom was in full bloom, cherry blossoms leaving pink petals everywhere. A time of new growth and renewal.

If he could have burned it all down, in that moment, he would have. Instead, he dragged himself from his bed, and found the box with his things. 

His badge, handcuffs, and gun had already been liberated by Interpol, but his clothes were intact, and despite the bruising over his ribs he dressed himself with very little fuss. They’d fared pretty well for having been on him in that damn wreck. Hat had been a complete loss, but what did that matter anymore? He hardly needed his trademark look anymore. Inspector Zenigata was dead, and the man left in his place wasn’t going to be around much longer, either.

It was midday when he walked out of his hospital room and didn’t bother to check himself out. He was halfway to escape when someone familiar turned the corner, coming toward his room.

“Yata.”

“Zenigata-keibu!” Yata sped up his approach, but when he realized Zenigata wasn’t happy to see him, his steps faltered.

“Not anymore, thanks to you,” Zenigata kept walking. 

Yata stumbled over his own feet, grinding to a halt. “Z--zenigata-keibu? Sir? Sir, wait!” 

Zenigata didn’t wait, he just kept going until Yata finally reached out and grabbed the back of his coat. 

“Don’t you dare,” he said, finally stopping. He had to be like ice, because ice could chip, but fire -- if he let the fire out he’d rage out of control. Fire had to be turned inward, because the only person he could afford to burn was himself. “Don’t you dare come to me and try and explain what you did. You knew what they’d do, Yatagarasu Goro. Were you so eager to get the case for yourself?”

Yata made a sound behind him that cracked Zenigata's already broken heart. It was a small noise of pain, because that shot had landed someplace tender. Good, Zenigata thought. Let him hurt, too.

“Zenigata-keibu-- I would never--”

“You would and you already did. This just proves you’re not ready. Don’t know that you’ll ever be. Lupin will walk all over you when he realizes you’re nothing more than a climber.” He resumed his walk, letting every cold word fall behind him like a trail of icicles. “Hope it was worth it.”

There were no steps behind him, no pursuit, so Zenigata pushed open the double doors of the hospital and strode right out into the afternoon sun. 

He had a singular mission: get home. There was a cab already waiting for fares, a young woman in a neat blue uniform waiting near her car.

“You need a fare?” he asked her.

“Yessir! Where would you like to go?” 

He gave her the address for the house in Chiyoda. It was the only place he had left. 

When the car pulled away from the curb, he propped his arm against the door and let his cheek rest on his knuckles. Five minutes into the drive, the anger had faded and he felt like shit, body and soul. Weariness set in, and the walk from his hospital room to the cab had taken every ounce of his strength. 

It was fifteen minutes to even get to Chiyoda, and another fifteen to get home. It was a short walk up another hill to the walled exterior, a keyed and passcode lock to bring him to the precipice of his family’s ancestral home.

Zenigata stood at the threshold of his home’s garden, leading to the traditional sukiya-zukuri style home beyond it. Algae covered the pond and the bushes had grown unkempt, but the persimmon tree was hanging on despite everything, even if there was no fruit on it at this time of year. 

It looked like he felt: abandoned and decrepit, left to run down. 

“Knew I should have found a new groundskeeper,” he muttered to himself as he walked across the path to the main entryway. 

Unlocking the main entry, he stepped into the spacious genkan foyer that hadn’t seen guests since his daughter had turned eighteen and she and her mother had moved out. He’d allowed them to live here for his daughter’s sake, and when she’d gone up to college and stayed in a dormitory, his ex-wife left the house behind.

That had been years ago. His daughter was married and all grown up. His ex-wife lived up north in chilly Hokkaido, an educating doctor in a teaching hospital. The place had laid empty for the longest time, and putting his bare feet on the first cold, wooden step chilled him. Nobody here but the dead walking.

All the rooms were wide open, the fusuma that were used for dividing rooms stored away and only shoji between each chamber. The house had seen several updates, and though the interior was as traditional as possible, there was still a fully equipped modern kitchen and bath that had been add-ons during renovation. But it hadn’t been a home in a long time. It was the bones of a house now, with nothing living inside it. A monument to all the Zenigatas that came before him, even though he’d the last of his name. 

He walked through, and quietly began to work. All the furniture left behind had been covered with drop-cloth, so the first step was to dust before they were all revealed. While there were few things left behind, a battered duster and other cleaning supplies were among them. 

The work was an excellent distraction, but he knew his real goal was waiting around the corner. Once the place would be set up, he’d order groceries from a delivery service and he’d settle in to wait. 

Wait to die, he supposed. Wait to figure out who he was supposed to be madly infatuated with, maybe. Wait. All he could do now was wait. 

He hated waiting. 

It was the worst part of the job, spinning one’s wheels while Lupin was off doing God knew what. At least normally, he’d be able to work with Tokyo Metro, or be loaned out to another group. He’d forged the very best, most dedicated team he could. He’d made sure they were the best equipped, best trained, and most flexible team he could gathe. They were constantly in demand for other countries. If Lupin wasn’t actively signalling a crime, chances were part of his team and even Zenigata himself was working somewhere else. If he wasn’t working a case, he was improving his skills - finding marksmen, pilots, technicians, anyone who’d teach him a skill that he would need to counter Lupin. It’d led to everything from weeks with mercenary crews to auditing art history classes in his spare time.

He wondered if they’d respect Yata like they had him. Probably not; Yata was young and soft, totally different from Zengiata’s boisterous command style and passion.. He’d have a hard time with people that had thrived under Zenigata’s command. They were very special men who were ready to give it their all, anytime, anywhere, and their commander had to have the same dedication. Yata wasn’t ready, dammit. He just wasn’t.

He tried not to think of it as he dusted, swept, and let the delivery boy in to get his groceries and supplies. He didn’t talk about the blood still on the single shirt that he had. He simply put everything away, heated up his cup ramen, ate to refuel, and returned to the cleaning. 

Soon he had the furniture uncovered, but it was mostly just props to make it feel less haunted and more lived in. The television hadn’t been used for almost ten years, and cable sure as hell wasn’t connected, so it was a complete loss. The radio had to suffice for now, and the old stereo system also hadn’t seen use in nearly a decade. Nothing had. The only reason it had running water and electricity is because he’d had the groundskeeper maintaining the place until last year before he finally died last year at the age of seventy-three. Still, he kept going. He had his study to organize eventually, which was actually important. If he was going to die, he’d need to go through several things to make sure all the loose ends were tied up. He’d leave that task till tomorrow since it was starting to get late.

Once the place was as put together as it could be, he came to the entire reason for coming home. It wasn’t that he didn’t have money - he wasn’t black card wealthy, but he had plenty of money available to him. It wasn’t like he spent much on himself. It wasn’t that he wanted to be here, because he really didn’t. 

It was because every gifted top-shelf bottle of booze had been stored here for the last decade. It wasn’t uncommon among the rich to attempt to bribe their way with Interpol agents, and Zenigata had few vices to exploit. He liked cheap cigarettes, he bought his suits off the rack, and he lived frugally with little by the way of luxury. But he did have one thing that he liked, and that was liquor, with a distinct preference for whisky. These days nobody tried to bribe him - he was too well known for being a straight shooter - but when he solved a case or retrieved an item stolen by Lupin, it wasn’t uncommon for whatever wealthy oligarch who had lost it to give him a little thank you, and it usually came in a bottle.

Constantly moving when he wasn’t living in his apartment in Lyon, Zenigata had thought it best to store most of it. Carefully packed bottles were sent to his groundskeeper and put into storage. He wanted it kept so that someday he could do two things: have himself a good drink when Lupin was finally in jail, and have something of quality on hand when the man finally got out so Zenigata could share it with him. Special occasions called for special drinks, after all.

Dying slowly seemed like a very long special occasion. He was sure as hell never going to catch Lupin now, let alone see him after he got out of jail. Might as well crack open one or two bottles that cost anywhere from the ten of thousands through hundreds of thousands of yen and enjoy them.

“Hibiki 18 Year?” he asked the open air, touching the cases that held unopened liquor that he had stashed. “Johnny Walker Blue? Who’s staying with me tonight, eh? God knows you’ve been sitting here long enough.” 

There were several other choices, but the Johnny Walker Blue was closest. He took it off the shelf, walked into the kitchen, and got the plastic cups he’d ordered with his groceries and poured himself three fingers of amber liquor. 

“Classy,” he said to himself, and sipped as he went to the couch. Sprawling, he settled in to simply drink until he couldn’t feel his extremities. “Twenty-seven thousand yen whisky in a plastic cup. What a life, eh?”

When no one answered, he tossed back the smoothest liquor he’d ever had, and poured himself another.

+++

The man on the radio announced the time as 7:30pm when he heard the door open. At least, he was fairly sure it was open. It was hard to tell through the noise of the radio and the fuzzy hum of his liquor-soaked brain. He cracked open one eye, and then the other, and strained to hear if it was really movement, or if this was a trick of the liquor.

There was the whisper over his woven-rush tatami floor. That was definitely a footstep, not trying to hide there was someone there. Zenigata got up, sluggish and stumbling. He grabbed the duster he’d used earlier and still had at hand, and got himself ready.

Ready for what, he didn’t know. Was it Lupin? Yata? He couldn’t imagine either of them exerting the effort; Lupin had escaped from custody shortly after he’d been given word that Zenigata was in stable condition, or so he’d been told. Yata didn’t have a way to get into the house, though it wouldn’t be surprising to Zenigata if he’d lent him a key for some reason or another and forgotten all about it and the house when he wasn’t in Chiyoda.

Eh, maybe death by home invader would be better than slow suffocation. He rolled his shoulders, tried to square up only to manage a sloppy rectangle, and stepped out into the hallway to nearly collide with his intruder.

“Haruka?” he said to the top of her head as she nearly went face first into his chest. “What-- what are you doing here?”

Of course, Haruka had a key. Haruka, his ex-wife, had a key because he didn’t care to collect them from her, and he hadn’t changed the electronic key in years. Of course, Haruka.

Haruka.

She peered up at him, tucking strands of her hair behind her ear when she got her personal space back. She raked her gaze from his head to his toes, with a brief and intense look at the duster.

“You look like shit.”

“Glad to see you too,” Zenigata said, and turned to head back to the couch. He didn’t know why she was here, and as he dropped himself back on the couch and looked at the half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, he was bound and determined to not think about her at all. More whisky went into his plastic cup.

“Are you-- Koichi, are you--” She looked at him, still bruised and drunk, then put her hands on her hips and hung her head. “The hell is going on, Koichi?”

“Could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m still listed as your emergency contact,” she explained. “The hospital called me.”

“Fuck,” said Zenigata. 

Haruka walked around the space he’d cleared, looking at him, the half-empty bottle, the did-my-best cleaning job. Her hands stayed on her hips.

“What are you doing?” she asked, and this time there was velvet around the steel in her voice. “For God’s sake, Koichi. You nearly died in a car wreck a week ago. It was on the news. Toshiko called me!” 

“Oh. Fancy that. Celebration, or frustration when I survived?” Zenigata asked, before he tilted his head back and drained his five figure whisky from his cheap plastic cup.

“Koichi!” The steel flashed again. “She doesn’t think of you like that.”

“I doubt she thinks of me at all.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Zenigata poured himself another round of his proven guilt suppressant. “It’s mine. I know. What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

“You checked yourself out of the hospital,” Haruka said, going from hands-on-hips to the folding of the arms. “You look like shit and you sound like you’ve been gargling glass.”

“Close enough to the truth,” he said.

“Lupin saved your life.”

“He’s done that a time or two.”

Haruka stared at him, and this time her words were pillow soft. “He thought you had a life worth saving. So why are you living like this, right now?”

He would have rather had the steel, Zenigata thought. Anything but pity. Anything but pity from  _ her.  _ The plastic cup crinkled in his grip.

“What’s going on?” she asked, still working with soft instead of hard.

“What it looks like.”

“It looks like you’re drinking yourself to death in the ancestral home you hate.”

“I don’t hate my house,” Zenigata focused on the minutiae that had nothing to do with the whisky in his cup. “It’s a perfectly good house. I just don’t live in it.”

“Even when you’re home,” she added.

“Even when I’m home,” he confirmed

Silence stretched as Haruka paced the tatami, not looking at him. He looked at her, though; it had been so long since he saw her, really  _ saw her _ . Her hair was graying now, like his. She didn’t hide it, though. She wore it short still, in the cute little bob that he’d always thought framed her face perfectly. Pursing her lips in frustration had drawn lines around her mouth, crow’s feet starting to spread from the corners of her eyes. Maybe a little plumper when he saw her last.

She was still, as far as he was concerned, one of the most beautiful women who graced the earth, and he’d fucked it all up and lost her.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said and downed another cup of whisky.

Haruka stopped her pacing only to change course, blinking at him in confusion. She came over and plucked the bottle from where it sat at his feet, propelling him to clumsy movement. He swiped at the air as she walked off down the hall.

“H--Haruka! The hell are you doing?” 

“Slowing down your self-pity suicide,” she said. 

Zenigata stumbled after her, feet smacking against the tatami as he lurched forward, balance turned to shit thanks to too much Johnny Walker. “Don’t you dare!”

“Dare? Ha!” She had gone straight to the kitchen, hell bent on getting to the sink before he got to her. “Of course I  _ dare _ .”

Zenigata gave a strangled cry as she upended the bottle of whisky over the sink and let all the amber wealth pour right out of it into the drain. 

“That is a twenty seven thousand yen bottle!” he said. He had height on her, but she had all five senses clear, pushing him back one handled and upsetting his balance.

He didn’t fall, but he had to catch himself against the counter.

“Good riddance!” she told him, turning her full attention back to him as the bottle rolled empty in the sink. “Now tell me what is going on! I haven’t seen you this bad since Lupin faked his damn death and vanished for a year!”

“I’m dying, alright? Good God, what do you want with me? Let me die in peace!” The tickle in his throat warned him. It was coming, ready to choke off his retorts and arguments and leave him at her feet. 

“You are not! You came out of that wreck--” she kept going until she saw his shoulders heave, and heard the noise that came out of them. 

Bent double as he started to cough, he was blessed that he couldn’t see her face. His pride would never allow him to endure the pity in her eyes.

Haruka was a doctor, though, and he hadn’t counted on her other reaction: sliding one arm around him and getting him seated at the low table. She was giving instructions but he couldn’t make them out over the blood hammering in his ears, crawling up his throat. 

He gagged, knowing a flower was there, crammed up against his tongue, and spat into his hand.

“Ha---Harr--”

“Don’t try to talk. There’s water. You can rinse your mouth, spit in the empty cup. Then sip the rest,” she said, hand rubbing soothing circles on his back once she had the glasses on the table before him.

He coughed into his arm, feeling wetness on his sleeve, soaking down to his skin. When he came up, the red-petaled flowers with their bright yellow stamens sat in the crook of his arm again. Another had fallen to the table, leaving a smear behind. He bent over the empty cup and spat another into the glass.

“Bleeding camellias. Do you-- do you see camellias. Haruka?” The priest thought it was her. He didn’t. But if the curse was real, if this wasn’t some delusion -- she’d see them, wouldn’t she? He still loved her.

“Koichi, what are you talking about?” She looked him up and down, still not comprehending -- still not seeing the blossoms as they sat on the table, in the cup, in the crook of his arm. “You’re covered in blood. Rinse and spit, Koichi.” 

He obeyed, getting the bloody film out of his mouth. It was easy to yearn again for the whisky that had seared his tongue and turned it numb. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, tongue turned traitorous instead of painless. “I am. I love you, and I’m sorry.”

Haruka didn’t respond except to urge the cup into his hand and for more sips to be taken. His throat burned, but the water was cool and helped a little bit. 

“I love you too,” she said, and curled one arm around him. He tried not to lean into the support she gave him, but he was so weak and she was so warm. “Tell me what’s happening, Koichi.”

He lied. He lied about the crash, he lied about the curse, he lied to her like he lied when he said he’d be ‘coming back soon’ and didn’t see her for a whole damn year. He just lied, and said, “I’m sick, it’s fatal, and so far they have no idea how to treat me.”

What he couldn’t say was  _ I’m cursed because I love someone more than I loved you and somehow it’s killing me. _

She stroked his hair now, holding him to her as he took solace in the presence of another human being. He never got to get close anymore. He was a demonstrative man - loud, boisterous, full of emotion in an unseemly way. He liked to hold and be held, to share space with another. Empty hotel rooms got filled with cheap liquor instead of lovers these days, but that didn’t hold him like another person could.

Mumbling another apology, Zenigata tried to disentangle himself and get up from his seat. It happened, after some wriggling and stumbling, but Haruka followed after him.

“I knew it was bad--”

“Bad enough you came down from Hokkaido!” Zenigata mumbled as . “How long have you been in town?”

“Long enough to see our daughter,” she said, voice kept soft and low, “and her new baby.”

Zenigata felt those three words slice him open as easily as the Zantetsuken did an armored car. He arched into the pain, gasping for air despite not coughing at all. Of course. That’s what happens when you get married (not that he’d been invited to that, either.) You start a family. Why he would have ever thought she wouldn’t, why he thought he’d be informed -- what a laugh. He had a grandchild and he’d never even known.

“I see,” he managed, and stumbled forward again. Damned if he didn’t want that whisky back in his hand.

“Koichi,” Haruka said as she followed him. “If this is -- if you’re this sick, if you’re honestly-- please reach out to her. Please. Don’t risk dying without seeing her one more time.”

He laughed at that, as he finally made it to the bedroom door, sliding it open to stagger two steps, drop to his knees, and faceplant into his futon. He was too weak to retort, too tired to even consider the idea. 

“Why?” he finally asked when Haruka sat down beside him. “Why do that to her? ‘Sorry I wasted all these years, but maybe you’ll forgive me on my deathbed,’ is that it?”

“I don’t care what you tell her,” Haruka said, helping him to roll over when he couldn’t quite get himself there. “Just see her. If not for your sake, then hers. Lance the wound so it doesn’t fester the rest of her life.” 

“And tell her what?” Zenigata asked, propping himself up on his elbow. “‘‘Sorry’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Maybe tell her about Ami -- who I took on like Oscar, because that son of a bitch  _ asked _ , and he knew I wouldn’t turn away. Smarmy little shit. How will she like to know I did it twice over? She’ll think she’s replaceable --  _ again. _ ”

“Who the hell is Ami?” Haruka asked.

“A young woman. Part of a big case. Crazy shit happened, Haruka. Lupin was involved--”

“When is Lupin not involved?”

“Well, he’s not involved in me dying slowly.” Well, he hadn’t  _ planned _ to murder him with a curse, Zenigata reasoned.

“Tell me about this girl.”

“Ami. Poor thing. Sold into slavery, broken and damaged. But strong for it, Haruka. You’d-- you’d like her, Haruka. She’s got steel in her spine,” he said, feeling his heart clench. What would she do when he was gone? Depend on Lupin? The very idea made him laugh, and that made him cough, and that made him bleed anew. Haruka swept him up into her arms, ignoring when it dripped from his mouth and left spatters on her crisply pressed slacks. 

“Koichi,” she said. “Koichi, I want you to do me one thing. If this-- if you’re really this sick, get your lawyer on the line. Get everything set up -- guardianship papers. I won’t let you leave her adrift. I’ll take her, Koichi.”

For a moment, he could only look up at her from her lap, baffled and bemused. “But why? I already failed you, and Toshiko, and Oscar. Why-- why would you take on Ami?”

“Whatever you are, you are still my daughter’s father,” Haruka said, fingers brushing against his brow. Her touch was so cool and he felt so hot, like he was burning up from the inside. Maybe that was just the roots of the damned bush growing in his chest, wrapping tendrils around his lungs, squeezing the life from him. “I won’t let her be alone, Koichi. You couldn’t abandon her, so neither will I.”

To think he’d wasted so many years of this woman’s life. He’d stolen something precious from the world when he married Haruka, and he couldn’t fathom why he hadn’t seen that before. “Why are you so good, after I was so terrible?”

Haruka laughed, and he didn’t understand her sudden mirth as she continued to stroke his hair. 

“We were both terrible,” she said, maintaining her soothing motions. “I should have known better with you. Should have listened when they all warned me you were a whirlwind, a wild thing. I thought maybe I could tame you. But there’s no changing a person, Koichi. Not like that.”

Zenigata sighed, eyes closing. He relaxed into her grip, too exhausted to do anything else. “I’ll call my lawyer tomorrow morning. Get the paperwork set up. She’s a French national, you’ll be dealing with the embassy and red tape, Haruka.” 

“I’ve dealt with worse,” she assured him. 

“I know. You married me, yeah?”

They both laughed then, and it was light, breaking the pall over them. He still hurt and she still fussed, but it was at least softer now. The burning smoldered instead of raged. 

He knew when he said he loved her, and she responded in kind that it wasn’t her. He’d known before, but definitive proof was good to have, so he didn’t have to ask the question over and over again. 

He didn’t long for her, didn’t pine for her -- he had held her and had her and loved her still despite all the brambles their marriage had been dragged through. He didn’t stop loving her once the divorce proceedings had been finalized. He loved her right now, but it wasn’t yearning, it wasn’t a fire desperately burning him from the inside out. It was banked coals that still glowed when her breath passed across his brow. Something that would never really go out, but had no more fuel left to blaze up with. It was a memory of a passionate love that had dwindled till it couldn’t warm them up anymore. It was simply  _ over. _

“You should go,” he said.

“I will,” Haruka replied, still holding on. “When you’re asleep, I’ll go. But one call and I’ll be back, Koichi.”

“Thank you.”

“Think about what I said,” she told him. “About Toshiko. See your grandson before you die.”

“Am I worthy of that?” The question slipped past his lips before he could stop it. 

Haruka laughed, though it broke part in her mouth and fell out in crumbles, halfway to sobbing herself. “Oh, Koichi. Yes, you are. You weren’t a bad man, you just weren’t a very good husband or father. But that doesn’t make you unworthy. Just human.”

Just human -- not a legend, not a force to be reckoned with, just… human. 

Zenigata could live with that, for as long as he had left.

+++

Ishikawa Goemon watched as the lights went out in the Zenigata household, and as the single female visitor left the premises. Zenigata was nowhere to be seen; he did not exit with the woman, and no lights lit up in the course of an hour.

In his late night stroll through the garden at the Zenigata estate, he realized he knew very little of the man outside his bloodline and his obsession. He was a good and honorable man, cunning beyond measure and always willing to adapt. Every new trick Lupin pulled, Zenigata would find a way to repurpose it for himself. In this, he was a respectable foe, a warrior among warriors. Though his family had humble roots in peasants who became police officers, he had the soul of a samurai -- the highest compliment that Goemon could give a person.

The garden was overrun with weeds, growing wild in the absence of the estate’s master. A pity, he thought. It was a beautiful strip of land, and he could see the potential of it even with moss and algae overtaking the pond, plants spilling out over their beds. 

He had plenty of time before dawn - if Zenigata was asleep and what he suspected was true, he could not bring himself to rouse the man from his slumber. So he did the next best thing: he cleaned. There were tools in the shed, with a lock that was easily removed, even if it had been beneath Zantetsuken’s strength and power. 

He managed in the dark to work, in meditative silence, before the sun began to creep up over the ocean and start to shed light over the land. With dawn here, he put things aside, and tested the door.

The woman had not locked it, so he let himself in and went into the kitchen and began to look for suitable vessels to cook with.

When he found none, he sighed, and went to find Zenigata’s coat, which was left in a heap on the couch in the main hall. He liberated Zenigata’s wallet from it, and went out to run a few errands. They were for Zenigata, after all, it would be alright if he used Zenigata’s credit cards for them.

An hour later the house was still dark and the door unlocked. He began to set to cooking, simmering miso, steaming salmon and making gooey okayu rice porridge. It was good for the sick, gentle on the stomach but nutritious. Zenigata would need something to eat, and if what Jigen had told him was true, he was in no place to cook for himself.

When a groan sounded down the hall, followed by a raucous bout of coughing, Goemon finished preparing the food and set it on the tray he’d bought before he marched down the hall and knelt at the doorway. 

He tapped the frame of the door and waited.

“H--Haruka?” Zenigata’s voice was weak, and he coughed again.

“No, Zenigata-keibu. It is Ishikawa Goemon. I came alone.”

“What?” Another round of coughing, before Goemon heard a couple of thumps. 

The door slid open. Zenigata sat on the other side, looking like death; bronze skin gone pale and ashen, cheek smeared with dried blood and lips bright with a fresher spray. He stank of liquor. Jigen hadn’t even scratched the surface of how bad off the man was. But maybe Jigen didn’t know. He got it from Lupin, after all, and Goemon wasn’t speaking to Lupin right now. Jigen, on the other hand, kept him updated.

“The hell are you doing here?”

“I made your breakfast.”

Zenigata stared, mute as stone, before he looked at the tray before Goemon. Then he sighed and gestured, scooting back to his bed and taking the tray with him.

“Besides making me breakfast,” Zenigata before he mumbled  _ itadakimasu _ over his meal and dug in.

“Jigen told me what happened with the accident. It was second hand through Lupin, so I needed to come find the truth.”

“What, that your dead ancestor’s ex-girlfriend cursed me?” Zenigata grunted after he’d emptied the bowl of miso in three gulps. “You knew, then?”

“I -- I had heard the legend,” Goemon told him. “I did not know of its veracity. But now… your qi is all wrong. The energy of your body doesn’t flow the way it should.”

When he settled himself and looked beyond just the flesh, to the rushing blood pumping through the body, to the energy it carried with it, Goemon could make it out. The cluster of darkness in Zenigata’s chest where it all began to slow, tangled and knotted. The flowers were deeply rooted, now.

“So I keep being told,” Zenigata said, as he moved on to salmon and okayu. “Did you come to pay your respects, or what?”

“I-- I needed to confirm. And to apologize.”

“Apologize?” Zenigata said, tilting his head. 

Goemon took a deep breath, and then put his hands to the ground and his forehead just beneath them, bowing till his nose was to the floor. “I should never have let Lupin rob a sacred space. It is a mistake made before, and a mistake we should not make again. I never intended for it to go as it did.”

“Huh,” Zenigata said between shoveled bits of rice. “Never thought I’d see the day with your brow to the ground.”

“I have never wished for your death,” Goemon continued, eyes screwed shut. He had helped kill Zenigata Koichi, and the world would be lesser for it. “You are an admirable man and a determined adversary. If -- If there is anyway I can ease your pain, I will. Even if it’s only by supplying a less painful death.”

“Stop it,” Zenigata snapped, putting his empty rice bowl and chopsticks down. “This isn’t your fault. I know who plans this bullshit. Anybody’s at fault, it’s Lupin.”

“I cannot agree,” Goemon insisted. How could Zenigata not understand? A mistake was a mistake, no matter who might have done the most damage. “All three of us had a hand in destroying the temple. All three of us share the blame.”

“I refuse you.”

“What?”

Zenigata finished his meal before he settled back. “I refuse your apology. When you get Jigen and Lupin’s foreheads to the ground, then I might believe it. But -- no. Not just you.”

“I-- I understand.” Geomon straightened up. “I will impress upon them the urgency of--”

“You’ll do nothing!” Zenigata snapped. “You’ll -- do nothing. Apologies are useless. Lupin won’t care. Lupin knows he leaves chaos and pain in his wake, more often than not. Why will he care if I’m just more collateral damage?”

“He-- He cares about you,” Goemon said, because that was the honest truth. They all did, really. Zenigata was an implacable foe, but when an ally, he always pulled through. At the very least, they all respected him. “He risked capture for you.”

“That wasn’t a risk. With me down, he risked a car ride to jail and then walking out of it a few days later on his timeline,” Zenigata said, unimpressed. He did not believe that he had a place in their regard; something else that must be rectified before the man died.

“Then-- do you know who it is? Who the flowers grow for?” Goemon asked, trying to impress upon Zenigata the urgency by leaning forward half an inch. “Tell me and I will fetch them!”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” 

“You would if it were someone who would be harmed by your affection,” Goemon said, thinking to himself. “Or someone who could not possibly return it.”

“I don’t know. I don’t--- I don’t really  _ think _ about love anymore. It’s a younger man’s game, Goemon. It’s for you to think about, or Jigen, or -- even Lupin, when he’s not bedding anything that'll let him on a lark.”

“But--”

“No buts,” Zenigata said, and he rose. “Sometimes, Goemon, you don’t get to fix what you broke. Sometimes other people suffer the consequences for it. High time you learned that. You-- you all have the capacity to be good men, and you-- you aren’t.”

Zenigata stepped past him in the doorway, coughing as he went. “Go home, Ishikawa Goemon. Or-- go wherever it is you go when you’re not with Lupin. I don’t care. Just -- leave me alone. I have enough without your attempts at absolution.”

Goemon sat there still, quiet and uncertain, as Zenigata vanished into another part of the house. Once he had resolved himself to his plan of action, he got up, cleaned up the meal and brought the dishes to the kitchen, cleaning up after himself in the quiet of the house.

He did not seek Zenigata out before he left. He knew time was of the essence: he had to find Jigen and Lupin before it was too late. If anyone could break a curse, Goemon was certain that together, they would find the way. 

For Zenigata, they could do anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Akikawa Haruka is actually Zenigata's ex-girlfriend taken from the LA Zenigata-keibu series (and worth a watch for anyone who enjoys Zenigata, because it's really really enjoyable) who got a glow up to ex-wife in this particular fic.


	4. The Breaking of a Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life, such as it is, keeps going. There's plenty of work to do before a man shuffles off his mortal coil, and Zenigata wants to make sure that his is handled before he dies. There's meetings and forgiveness for some, but other things can't be mended by simply saying 'sorry' or 'I'll fix it.' Lupin will find that out the hard way.

By the time lunch hour rolled around, Zenigata was sending up thanks that Goemon had come by instead of grumbling and muttering about it. Gentle food after a night of hard drinking had kept him going, even if the hangover made him sweat buckets and feel as if Jigen’s Magnum was firing right next to his ear. 

He ate sparingly at lunch as he waited for a return call from his lawyer. The coughing was now becoming a noticeable constant; low grade grating coughs that would escalate into the terrible, bloody affairs that left him mopping up after himself until he finally said ‘fuck it’ to the empty air and just left blood sitting in the sink between rounds.

There was no point. Had there ever been a point? He didn’t know. He did know that there was a lot more than Johnny Walker Blue in the house, though, and what Haruka didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Well, more than necessary. 

He was rummaging among the bottles, looking for something sweeter than he might normally indulge. He knew there was some spiced rum in there, a gift from some Jamaican Distillery when he’d actually managed to thwart a Lupin scheme (and bag a warlord for his trouble.) When he finally found it, the deep orange-gold liquid inside taunted him. 

“Guess it’s you and me, eh? Nothing better to do this afternoon beyond wait for phone calls,” he said to the bottle.

Then the door chime rang. Zenigata stopped and put the bottle away. Had he heard that right? The door chime rang again to confirm that he had.

Stumbling through his house, he considered whether or not just to ignore it. Then his cellphone began to ring, sounding out in the kitchen. He went to pick it up, and saw that it was Haruka’s number. A text followed. _Let us in._

Us? Zenigata stared at the phone for a moment as his emotions plunged into a cold, terrifying place. Had she brought Toshiko? Had she decided to make the choice _for_ him, and just -- bring her to see him like this, this piece of shit he was turning out to be?

“Fuck!” he said, and then there was the sound of a key in the lock.

He staggered back to the door as fast as he could, hearing Haruka call his name. He staggered, coughing hard again, but reached there as two people put down their shoes and stepped up from the genken.

It wasn’t Toshiko. It was just Yata.

Yata, who he’d insulted and belittled the day before. 

“The fuck is going on?”

“He was outside when I got here,” Haruka said. They were both holding bags-- Haruka’s looked like groceries, but Yata was carrying a duffle bag. 

“I brought you your spare clothes from the office, and the suits from the hotel room,” Yata said, as if Zenigata had not ripped him down to nothing the night before.

Now, in the harsh light of mid-day, he could see it. Zenigata saw how _tired_ Yata looked. His already narrow face was wan, and his eyes were shadowed. He’d done his poor boy dirty, hadn’t he? He’d taken out fear on him for nothing.

“Yata, I-- can we--”

“I got your messages.”

“What?”

“You sent them. Last night.”

“I did what?”

Haruka moved past him with groceries in both arms. “I told you he was black out drunk last night.”

“What-- I was not!” 

“You were,” she insisted. “Do you remember anything after I put you to bed?”

“Did something happen?” Zenigata tried to shake the memories of the night previous to the fore of his mind. Haruka arrived, they argued, they fought, he coughed until he was nearly out. He made it to his bed, he remembered that much. After that, there was nothing until Goemon showed up. 

Haruka huffed before she walked inside, letting the two men have their awkward plateau to themselves.

“Can I come in?” Yata asked.

“Yata-kun, I-- I’m so sorry. For what I said--”

“I already know.”

“What?” 

Yata took his phone out of his pocket, and held it up, screen unlocked. His eyes were flat, but his voice was very soft, as if he were trying to be gentle in repeating himself. “I told you. You-- last night. Just. Read them.”

Zenigata took his phone, and found that the screen was open to a series of texts. While they were badly spelled and mostly incoherent, they were apologies. One after the other, going on for at least an hour last night. Zenigatawas certain it looked like the rambling of a dead drunk madman, babbling about how he’s sorry and it’s a curse and he’ll never get to see Yata get promoted, but… well, the sentiment was in the right place.

“You blew up my phone in the middle of the night,” Yata said, standing there before his mentor with all the courage he had. “You said you were sorry, and you were wrong.”

“I did,” Zenigata said, presented with irrefutable evidence that it was, in fact, what he said. 

“Do you actually feel that way?”

“Yes,” he said, and extended Yata’s phone back to him. “I’m sorry, I was-- there’s no excuse I can make, Yata-kun, truly, that’ll make it better.”

“I can forgive you, Zenigata-keibu,” Yata said, voice still soft. There was hurt there, but much had been done to mend it with Zenigata simply owning up to his wrongdoing. 

For the moment, the breathlessness was because his heart had seized, not because of some cursed cough. Zenigata didn’t hesitate to reach out and drag Yata to him, crushing him in arms that suddenly rediscovered their strength. 

Yata squeaked, shocked, but then Zenigata felt his hands fist in his filthy shirt, dufflebag dropped to the wayside. They stood there like that for a moment, before Zenigata let his subordinate go out of necessity. He had to push back to get room to cough, bloody and miserable, into his hands. 

“Here, sir-- I brought the spare clothes from the office, and your hotel room,” Yata said, picking up his duffle bag. “Why don’t you bathe and change? We’ll clean up a bit, okay?”

Zenigata couldn’t say anything; if coughing hadn’t wrung the breath from him, emotion would have kept him choked. He took the bag that was passed to him.

He found Haruka in the bathroom, already running a hot bath. He stood there in the doorway with clothing in his hands.

“Shower and soak,” she said, and held up a little tablet. “I’m going to put this on the floor by the drain. As the hot water hits it, it’ll release vapor. Hopefully it’ll help your lungs so you’ll have less congestion.”

A kindness, but one that was ultimately useless. He didn’t have the heart to say so, though, and so he just nodded and did exactly as he was told. When the vapors forced his lung open, he watched the camellias it brought up float around his feet before they melted among the tablet’s bubbles, melting and sweeping down the drain in a pinkened swath of foam. 

Still, he was fortunate for the effort. If dying his hair had been his vanity and liquor his luxury, Haruka’s vice had been luxurious bath times. Bubbles, soaps from far-off lands, oils and scents. She was easy to shop for when he traveled. Every place had some new thing - a scent, a type of soap, a new sponge, even. He’d collected more than a few over his travels. Though Zenigata's father had modernized the house's kitchen and bath, it was this Zenigata that had brought it up to Haruka's standard of luxury. It was their first project, right after getting married. He had time to do a lot of things like this, before Lupin.

The tub itself was large and round, done in a traditional wooden style but seated in the lap of modern luxury set beside the stone-and-tile shower. It had been hard work, and while he’d called in contractors on some of it he’d learned to lay tile and caulk, so his handiwork would be a part of his gift too.

The house had come into his possession a year after they married. His mother went to live with his sisters once his father died, and she had wanted her son to take over the house since he was starting a family. It was only fuel on the fire for his elder sisters’ resentment, and it only got worse the less and less he was home. Toshiko grew up in a house that belonged to her father but never really saw him in it. Just pieces of the Zenigata past. 

Now, he sat in the tub, thinking of those things; the things he’d left behind to chase after the man he’d never see again. His last memory of Lupin was muddled; the thief’s big hairy hands, his long face dirty with smoke and blood. Zenigata hoped Lupin was breathing better than he was, somewhere far away from here.

Once he felt clean, he dried and dressed himself, managed to shave without cutting his own throat, and came back out to the kitchen.

“Did you make your own breakfast?” Haruka asked as soon as he was there. “Who got all these groceries? They’re all fresh ingredients. How can you cook in your condition?”

“I can’t,” Zenigata said. “Ishikawa Goemon came by.”

“ _What?”_ The word came out of both Haruka and Yata, but in very different tenors. Haruka was shocked and bewildered that a wanted criminal would brazenly arrive and make breakfast. Yata just seemed mildly surprised.

“Does he just-- drop in to have tea regularly?” Haruka asked, eyes wide.

“Not hardly,” Zenigata tried to sound grumpy, which wasn’t hard. He hadn’t exactly invited Goemon over, and they’d parted badly besides. He just couldn’t let her know how often he had to be familiar with Lupin’s gang. The samurai’s drop it honestly wasn’t that out of the ordinary, if you knew the truth.  
“So what was he doing here?” Yata asked. He was calmer because he knew the score. 

“Apologizing. He believes-- he believes that they’re at fault for my illness,” Zenigata said, regretting it immediately as it came out of his mouth. 

Haruka was still boggling, eyes owlish in their wideness. “Why would he believe that?”

“Stupid legend about the shrine they tore up,” Zenigata said quickly. “That’s all.”

Haruka and Yata both looked at him with very different expressions. Haruka was a woman of science -- she made her worship, yes, but Zenigata had been far more religious than she had. Yata, though… Yata had seen crazy things, read case files that no one else was privy to. Yata knew how weird things could be with Lupin involved.

“Are all of Lupin’s crew… this gullible?” Haruka asked.

“Goemon is a very special case. Jigen’s a bit superstitious,” Zenigata confirmed, before he couldn’t help but laugh. “Lupin would spit in the eye of God if he met him.” 

“Of course he would. Then steal his robes,” Haruka said, turning away. “So he made you breakfast and you let him?”

“He did it before I woke up. I was just getting up when he was there with a tray full of food and a sob story. Seeking absolution.” Zenigata shrugged. “I didn’t give any.”

Yata’s brows lifted a little higher. “No?”

“First off, he didn’t kill me. Second off, why would I? Absolution is earned. Him putting his brow to the ground is fine, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if he doesn’t _change_.”

“Here we go,” Haruka muttered under her breath.

“Oh, don’t start.”

“You’re too soft, thinking any of them are going to change,” she said, turning away and returning to her work. “They’re not. They’re just a pack of thieves.”

Retorts and denial battered at his lips, trying to burst past and tell her otherwise, but Zenigata kept his mouth shut and looked away. Finally, when he could speak safely, he said, “You’re right.” 

It didn’t mollify her. Tension forced her shoulders upward, and Zenigata lapsed into silence. There was no point in saying anything further.

Yata, caught in the crossfires of years of hurt and resentment, finally asked, “Why don’t we go outside for a bit, Zenigata-keibu? You can tell me what you heard from Ishikawa and maybe I can make sure he’s caught if he’s wandering around trying to atone for his sins.”

Haruka said nothing as Yata ushered Zenigata into the garden, and it was then that he noticed things had changed.

“He-- he gardened. He cleaned up the place, while I was asleep. How long was he _here?_ ” Zenigata asked, getting more and more bewildered as he walked over to where the pond had been dredged of algae. There were no fish in it, not anymore. But at least it looked a fair sight better than it had yesterday.

“Is it true?”

“Don’t ask silly questions, Yata.”

“ _Keibu!_ Nothing is silly when it involves Lupin!”

Zenigata laughed at that. “God, you have learned your lessons with me, haven’t you?” 

“I hope so, sir,” Yata said, looking out over the garden. 

“Sit with me, then, and we’ll talk it over.” 

Once Yata joined him, he explained it. The Priest, the kami, the vengeful dead. Flowers in his lungs. He couldn’t smell much but blood and camellias anymore; even after the hot bath the scent of rotting flowers was omnipresent in his nose. Yata was a dutiful listener, and he did not ask questions or interrupt. He waited until the end, like a good student.

“Is it true, then?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Zenigata-keibu, is it true?”

“I don’t know!” Zenigata blurted. Why did everyone want to know what he thought. It didn’t matter what he thought about it, he was going to die regardless of whether it was a curse or a disease. “Am I supposed to believe that? That it’s not just my mind playing tricks on me as stage 10 cancer or whatever it is eats me from the inside out?” 

“But if it is a curse, those can be combated, broken!”

“The priest told me three things, and they’re all ridiculous,” Zenigata said, already feeling the conversation sap what remained of his strength. “The priest told me I’m in love, and so I’m cursed because I yearn for someone. Except I don’t. The cure is two fold: I can either confess and have my feelings reciprocated, or I can let the priests perform some ritual that’ll cut out my heart metaphorically - and then I can't love ever again. It’s so stupid. Myths and legends, that’s all.”

It was just cancer, he told himself. They just hadn’t run the right tests. Goemon was all wrong, he wasn’t a rational source of literally anything. He still clung to the old ways of the samurai, and it was ridiculous. Goemon was ridiculous.

Yata didn’t seem to have the same thoughts, though. He was quiet. He sat there, and said, “Would it be so bad, to save your life?”

“Yata-kun,” Zenigata began, very gently, as if he were talking to a young child. “Yata-kun, please listen. The things I said to you yesterday-- they’re the type of things a man with no heart says every day. The man with no heart does nothing but serve himself. Do we really need more inspectors like that? Do you want to learn from a man like that?”

Yata’s head dipped till his chin was nearly to his chest. “No, sir. I -- I don’t. That’s not the type of inspector I want to be.”

“Good,” Zenigata clapped his hand on his shoulder. “Then what I have taught you has stuck. There are a thousand bad cops out there-- killers with badges, bullies with guns. We are not going to be those officers. We’re going to be better, for as long as we have a badge. We stop those sorts of cops. _Never_ forget that.”

“You know, when-- I got the assignment-- I _fought_ for this assignment,” Yata began, voice unsteady. “Not because it was Lupin’s case, but because it was you. I dug up every bit of information. Good and bad.”

Zenigata nodded once. There were mistakes made. Things he couldn’t undo or take back. He hoped he’d served his penance for those, along the years. Enough that the scales were balanced, if not tipped more heavily toward justice than selfishness. “I know who I was, and I know who I am.”

“I still wanted to have this case. They fought me on it, sir. Every step of the way. Said you’d never take another partner. Not after-- ” Yata kept his eyes on his hands, not strong enough to look up when he skirted the name _Oscar._ “Not after what happened with your lieutenant.”

It had only been a matter of time until someone invoked his dead son, Zenigata realized. Adopted after Zenigata had pulled him from the river to prevent him from drowning as a boy, he went from homeless scavenger to an excellent policeman under Zenigata’s care. But fatherly pride made him blind to the warning signs, and he ignored what Oscar’s untreated trauma could mean. He tried to make sure he was never ashamed of his past, but in doing so, taught him rigidity in the face of adversity. He didn’t know how to bend when things got hard, and Zenigata had forgotten why flexibility was important. Oscar paid the price with his life, breaking when the storm came instead of learning to bend with the wind.

It was after Oscar’s death that Zenigata realized that there was no killing Lupin. He was a rat and scoundrel, but what right did he have to take his life? Everyone deserves the chance to change and grow, and he’d even watched Lupin do so. Just not enough to cease his crime and go properly citizen.

Time had changed all of them. Filed down sharp edges. Mended old hurts. When Lupin extended his hand, Zenigata felt safe in taking it. His pride might be battered, but Lupin would not truly betray him. Not to hurt him.

“I had no intention of doing so, no.” Zenigata said as he shook off the shadows of the past. This was a hurt that would never mend, and these days scabs were easily torn off before they even finished crusting over the wounds in his soul. “I was in no place to do so. Even-- even nearly fifteen years after the fact, I didn’t… I couldn’t. I was unbelievably lucky that I did such good work, you know? That I got away with it for so long.”

“Still, you could have fought harder against it. But you eventually relented.”

“I did. I saw you, and at first I was horrified -- another young, handsome, dark-haired officer. I thought it was some sort of sick joke,” Zenigata said as he folded his hands together, resisting the urge to wring them. “But you were…. you weren’t like him. You didn’t come from that-- place, endure what he did. You didn't have cracks running through your foundation. So I let it happen.” 

Yata was quiet for a time, and Zenigata was content to let that happen, too. He coughed a few times into his kerchief, but nothing that doubled him over. Instead, he just looked at the half-assed cleaning job Goemon had done and had to admit that it did at least look a little bit better out here.

“Sir,” Yata finally said, voice quavering a moment before he caught himself. “Sir, I hope I make you proud.”

“You already have. The best thing you could do now is make _yourself_ proud,” Zenigata told him, shaking his shoulder once with his big hand. “Do that so you can look at yourself in the morning and keep going. You-- you’ll do fine, if you can do that.”

Zenigata said nothing after that; Yata needed the time to cough once himself, and fight back whatever emotion had jammed up in his throat. Zenigata could give him that time. He could give him all the time he needed.

After all, Zenigata wasn’t going to need it for much longer.

  
  


+++

The next few days were a blur. Haruka came and went, though there was little to be said after that first night. Zenigata let her fuss, right up until she started talking about hospice care. Then he shut the door on her and refused to listen. Hospice care! What, so they could plant the camellias? Palliative drugs so he’d lose all his senses and die a muddled mess? Bah! He wasn’t having it. Her time off was running out, though, and once the bits with the will and the lawyers were done, Zenigata hoped she’d leave. She didn’t need to hang around to find his body when he finally snuffed it. It seemed grotesque to ask that of her.

Yata did much the same, though far less frequently. He was busy handling a Lupin sighting near Mt. Fuji, and Zenigata was content to just -- not think about it. He was never going to see Lupin again. The last thing he remembered was Lupin propped above him, grimey and looking at Zenigata like he was something important to him. Something precious.

That was obviously nonsense, though. It was just a lack of oxygen to the brain that gave that impression; Zenigata had just been through a car wreck, and was sick besides. Though Zenigata despised the thief’s ways, he knew ultimately Lupin could be trusted to do the right thing on occasion. Leaving him to die wouldn’t have been right, so Lupin didn’t. That’s all that was.

The night Haruka announced she was leaving for Hokkaido the next morning, but would come back within the week, was the night he returned to the closet full of liquor and skipped everything and went for his favorite; Hibiki 18 Year, Japanese honey-whisky. It was the best whisky in the world if you asked Zenigata. It was made right here in his homeland, it was was smooth and complex, and though he mourned that he still didn’t have a proper tumbler to drink from, he would still enjoy it out of a plastic cup. 

He settled out on the engawa, a traditional veranda that surrounded the house, leaving the doors open so that he could crawl back inside when he was good and ready, rather then struggling with them when drunk. He was going to get drunk, after all. Liquor was one of the few things that successfully numbed him down, and he wanted the hurting to stop.

He’d only finished sipping down the first glass when he heard the gate open. 

“Haruka, is that you?” Goddamn it, he didn’t want her to come back. They’d have another fight, and he’d had enough of that to last him a second lifetime.

“No sir,” Yata said as he came up the walk. 

“I thought you were in Yamanashi?”

“I was,” he said.

Then he heard it. The collection of other feet coming up the path. Zenigata sat up, spine going rigid. There were four other people trailing behind Yata; Lupin right behind him, then Fujiko, Goemon, and Jigen bringing up the rear.

They were right here, in the garden of his ancestral home. The Lupin collection, a motley band of thieves, the "Lupin Gang", whatever you wanted to call it. They were all here with his subordinate.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he said, trying to get to his feet without swaying. “What, what have you done?”

“Sir,” Yata began, putting up his hands, “It’s Lupin. He does the impossible three times before breakfast, right?” 

“I sure do!” Lupin volunteered, but the chipper tone was forced. “Hey, guys, go put the supplies inside. I wanna talk to the old man and the young pup, okay?” 

“Don’t you go in my house!” Zenigata bellowed, before he coughed once and brought up blood in his mouth. He didn’t bother to spit, it wasn’t even that bad. “That doesn’t explain _shit_ , Yata!”

“It does,” Yata insisted, hands balling up at his sides. “If you’re going to beat a curse without carving out your own heart, then -- wouldn’t Lupin be the one to help you?”

“No!” Zenigata said.

“Yes!” Lupin retorted. He came up behind Yata, and slung an arm around his shoulder, gesturing with his other hand. “Goemon and Yata found us at the same time, and once I had two sources on the whole thing, I thought-- what would the best thing I could do for my ages-old rival but to steal him from the brink of death?” 

Zenigata stood there, red-mouthed and blank eyed. This was his nightmare. To have Lupin watch him wither into nothing, coughing to death and having the life choked out of him.

“Get out,” he finally whispered. 

“Looks, Pops--” Lupin tried to push away from Yata, but Zenigata found he still had the strength to lift the much smaller man right off his feet.

“Don’t you dare!” 

“W--whoa, hold up here, Pops! We’re here to _help!_ ”

Zenigata held his breath, feeling his lungs start to burning, going from unpleasant heat to blazing inferno. Nevertheless, he pitched Lupin into a bush and kept his feet for a hot minute till the coughing erupted and brought him to one knee.

“Don’t-- don’t you dare--” he spat, and spat again, before he hoisted himself to his feet, grinding the camellias under his bare heel. “You don’t get to help. You can’t fix what you broke!”

“What-- Pops, please! We really want to _help_.” Lupin was wriggling, trying to get out of the bushes without help. Soon Jigen and the others were in the garden, and Jigen was the first to Lupin’s side. 

Yata was shouting something behind him. Whether it was at them or at him, Zenigata didn’t know.

“You don’t get to help,” Zengiata told him as he staggered again. “This is-- this is your fault! You and your stupid theft! You, grabbing for everything, greedy little shit that you are!”

Jigen and Lupin stood there, arm in arm before the bushes, open mouthed and silent as Zenigata felt the blaze in his chest burn out of control.

“You’ve killed me, finally! I knew it was going to happen someday, that it’d be me breaking my fool neck or taking yet another bullet because of you. I’d be the one left dead.” The scar over his heart where the partner gun to Lupin’s own Walther had left a mark so many years ago suddenly ached, like it was remembering the impact. Just one of many terrible injuries he’d taken in the line of duty. “But it would never be you. Never you with the devil watching over you. It would be me in the ground and you spiriting yourself off to somewhere safe.”

“Pops, listen--”

“Keibu--”

“No! No excuses. This happens to people, Lupin, when they’re caught in your wake.” Zenigata had spent some high days rolling along on it, letting it speed him forward to. The chase had been wild, and he’d loved it. Zenigata could admit that, even now. Just not to Lupin. “Sometimes-- sometimes you even manage to turn it to your advantage. Not just to yourself, but to others. You make _good_ out of the chaos. But this time, there’s no good here. Just your damned bullshit.”

“Seriously, we’ve -- Goemon and Yata filled us in. There’s a cure, Pops! Even if we can’t find your --- your beloved, whoever she is-- we’ll figure out something.”

The ‘cure’. Zenigata barked out a bloody laugh, blood spraying from his lips with it. It kept coming back to that madness. He spat on the bushes before Lupin, flowers going with the blood. 

“Why does anyone, least of all you, Lupin, think I would want to live with my heart carved out?” Zenigata staggered forward, ignoring that Jigen moved out of the way instead of into it, giving him a clear opening to Lupin. “Do you remember Keith Hayden? He was a killer cop with no regard for human life! Do you think for a moment that I want to be like that? That I’d cut out the heart of me to let the rest of me live?”

Lupin’s expression drew up into a tight set of lines, mouth pursed and eyes flat. Then he shook his head, never looking away. “No, I don’t think you would. But if there’s one way to beat it, there has to be others, Zenigata.”

At least he had the strength to look him in the eyes, Zenigata thought. 

“Let me try, okay? I’ll do what I do best-- I’ll find what you need, and I’ll get it for you. Okay?”

“You’re going to steal someone’s heart for me, Lupin?” Zenigata enjoyed Lupin’s flinch when he bared his bloody teeth. “You, a womanizer and cad? Please.”

“I’m going to _work_ on it, and I’m going to find a _way_ ,” Lupin insisted, keeping his voice level. “In the meantime, we’re gonna keep you comfortable. You still have plenty of strength left, yeah? Enough you can still pitch me like a pro!”

“Bah!” Zenigata doubled again, coughing harshly over branches of the bushes, seeing the camellia flowers cling to the leaves like they were growing from them. “You can’t beat this, Lupin.”

“I’m not going to stop trying,” Lupin said, straightening his jacket. All the ne’er-do-well merriment was gone. In this moment, Lupin was all straight talk and business. “I won’t abandon you, old man.”

“I was never yours to abandon in the first place,” Zenigata said.

“Sure thing, Pops.” Lupin said, returning to flippancy like a light switch had been flicked on. “In the meantime, let’s maybe not sauce ourselves up, and we’ll start researching…you know, who you might be, uh. In love with, I guess. Goemon’s gonna work on finding some other priests, and Yata’s gonna keep his ear to the ground with weird crimes and stuff. So we’ve got all the angles covered.”

Zenigata turned his eyes to his subordinate again. Yata’s face was pinched with stress, but he did not cow down. He just returned Zenigata’s gaze with one of his own, resolute with determination.

In that moment, his heart broke a little bit. “I taught you too well. You shouldn’t place your faith in Lupin like this.”

“You do, “ Yata said.

“More the fool me, then,” Zenigata said, staring down the thief. “Be better, Yata. Be better than me.”

“Someday, sir. Maybe someday. But not today.”

Zenigata felt Yata’s hands on his shoulders a moment later, and he let the young man support him and start to steer him away. The argument was over, such as it was. Lupin would start to dig into his past, Yata would do what was necessary to look into other means, and Goemon would travel looking for mystics.

“You okay, boss?” Jigen was speaking to Lupin as Zenigata was lead up the engawa into the house. 

“Yeah, man. Man, he coughed all over these camellia bushes. Talk about irony,” Lupin said as they both walked after them.

Zenigata knew full well there were no camellia bushes in his gardens. Just the ones springing up from his lungs. With a soft moan, he felt the last of his strength leave him; his knees buckled and he started to drop. They were shouting then, but he didn’t hear anything at all. Not over the single thought that was chasing around the synapses flaring and dying in his brain: Lupin had seen the camellias.

Of course it had been Lupin.

It had _always_ been Lupin. 

He gave a bloody sob, and then surrendered himself to unconsciousness without a fight.

+++

When Jigen went looking, Lupin couldn’t be found in the kitchen, the living area, or the garden. Jigen had been resistant to exploring the rest of the place - it hadn’t been lived in for years and honestly, Zenigata deserved more respect than he was getting - but he knew Lupin wouldn’t be. Lupin was a thief; Lupin wanted to see what boxes he could open and what might be in them. The world was one big puzzle, and he wanted to pick it apart. He wanted everything from the tiny little pieces of the average man to the giant cogs of governments, and he wanted them now.

It was half of why he was so fun to work for, and half of why he was such an abominable pain in the ass. Jigen loved him for it regardless.

He passed by the bath -- Lupin wouldn’t be gauche enough to enjoy a soak when he knew each of Zenigata’s breaths were coming up with blood. No, he’d go digging. He’d want answers. But the mystery was something that couldn’t have its lock picked or it’s security mapped out.

It was Zenigata. Who did he love? Who did he long for? Who was so important that Zenigata would love them from afar, but never risk telling them? He was a heart-on-his-sleeve sort of guy. It was respectable, that open and in-touchness with his feelings. Jigen sure couldn’t handle it, and Lupin was only expressive in a performative manner. His real feelings were under ten masks and a sports jacket. Lupin guarded them as jealousy as his marks guarded their mysteries and their wealth. A glimpse of them -- and Jigen had seen more than a few -- was worth more than Lupin’s weight in gold even if it couldn’t be spent on Givenchy. 

The other half of him being unseen was a pain in the ass. Not knowing what Lupin was thinking or feeling because he lied like it was required for him to take a breath. But Jigen knew full well that Zenigata’s barbs had hit home today, and that Lupin was more than capable of feeling guilt. The flighty Peter Pan bullshit was a persona, and the real person who was Lupin was hidden by the facade of his devil-may-care bullshit.

When Jigen slid the door to what was Zenigata’s study once upon a time, he found Lupin. He also found piles of boxes-- some for files, others just plain battered cardboard storage. Some had words on them. The ones marked LUPIN had casefiles, probably, and little things picked up over the years. The one he found Lupin rummaging in was labeled OLD STUFF. Lupin was rumpled, out of his jacket and with his tie tugged loose, staring at some picture like he couldn’t believe whatever was in it. 

“What’d you find?” Jigen prompted from the doorway.

Lupin’s smile reappeared, and it was filled with fondness. “Only the old man’s mugshot.”

“For real?” Jigen managed the densely packed study and came over to take the photo. Sure enough, a black eyed and stoic faced Zenigata Koichi stared back at him. He was probably around sixteen years old, but still built like a brick shithouse - broad shoulders, square-jawed, with those deep set eyes and caterpillar eyebrows. He was a lot less gentle looking than the Pops they knew today; no laugh lines or crow’s feet, no smile.

He smiled so easily these days. It hadn’t been like that in the start.

“So what was he doing?” 

“Boosting cars and starting fights,” Lupin said, his grin nearly splitting his face, toothsome and merry. “Apparently from the letters he’s sealed up in here, his Dad paid through the nose to make sure he didn’t end up in one of those delinquent high schools.”

“Damn,” Jigen said, before he knelt down. “What about these? The ones labeled BOOK? You been in them yet?”

“No, not yet. Crack it open? I’m going to dig through this box, see if maybe there are some childhood sweethearts or some shit we should be investigating,” Lupin said as he continued to rummage.

In the boxes, there were folders -- one marked YOUTH then one for his work with Tokyo Metro, and then-- about the time he started chasing Lupin, Jigen imagined -- the files started to be year by year. 19XX on through 20XX. 

“Hey, didn’t Pops tell you one time, that he was writing a book? About the two of you?”

“Yeah!” Lupin said, though he didn’t look up. His grin revived, warmth spreading over his face. As much as they might bitch, they were all fond of the old man. “Love And War with Lupin III! Can you believe that title?”

“Pretty sure the publisher would make him change it, yeah. Yeesh,” Jigen said as he settled down. He wondered if there were clues here -- people he saved, he helped. That rang a bell in the back of his mind. A recent case, and woman in need. Jigen knew the type, and Zenigata was definitely his kind of man. Hated to be stupid over women, but constantly was.

“You think maybe we should ask about Elena Gotti?” he suggested as they went along. “She was the latest damsel in a long line he’s helped out, and he… he was _really_ invested in her. I mean, you tell him ‘you can’t beat Jigen’ and he goes ‘I know’ and stands there, balls out and ready to go anyway…Tch! He liked her. Liked her enough to get between her and me, anyway.”

“Yeah, I’ve already got her on the list,” Lupin said, thumbing through photos. “Not finding any real serious girlfriends or anything from his high school days. No pictures, anyway.”

“Well, remember, that was pre-cellphone days,” Jigen said, briefly holding up his hands to frame Lupin with his fingers. “He probably had to use a Polaroid to get those if he wanted ‘em.”

“Yeah, I know, and some of those are here, but -- there’s never any with him and a sweetheart. At least not in his teens,” Lupin said.

Jigen shrugged, hands dropping. “I didn’t date at that age either.”

“You were shooting people for a living at that age, Jigen.”

“And then lying about my age and joining the army. He became a cop. Maybe it’s like, the same damn thing? Trying to outrun something on his heels.”

Lupin huffed softly, and Jigen lapsed into silence. He flipped through case after case, finding pictures and notes, and finally drafts. Some were even red-lined, with notes in the margins.

“Oh man. The book is a real deal. Hell, he’s talking about things you’ve done, how they pieced together how you did them-- his notes, though!” Jigen laughed, raspy but feeling strangely happy. “‘Would have got the son of a bitch here if it hadn’t been for Jigen Daisuke!’ Yeah, you know it, Pops. Now if only _Lupin_ did.”

“You talk like I’ve never appreciated you!” Lupin put one hand to his chest, crumpling his shirt in his fist like he was having some sort of heart attack. “You don’t know how much that wounds me, knowing my love isn’t enough!”

“Shut the fuck up, wiseguy.” Jigen didn’t want to hear about Lupin loving anyone, because Jigen knew full well nobody else had a shot at his heart. Certainly not his gunman, Jigen Daisuke. Boots had been knocked in the past, but Lupin was Lupin - he was peculiar in who he invested in and why. Jigen was his partner in all things, but he only protected Lupin’s heart: he never got to hold it. Lupin had foolishly entrusted his love to Fujiko over the years, but even in the end she hadn’t been able to keep it. The years had driven them all to strange places, whether it was to each other’s bed or the opposite sides of the world. Lupin was a hard man to hold on to, probably by design.

“These notes are great. The reading’s quality, too -- either he’s got a ghost writer livening this shit up, or he’s actually pretty good,” Jigen went on, pushing past his own dark thoughts. The notes in the margins were more interesting than the cases themselves, anyway. They were little snippets of admiration, frustration, joy and loss, side notes about people they’d met and why this case was significant -- about how he felt about it. Sometimes it was ‘this is too weird for publication’ or ‘nobody will buy this happened, but maybe with the right spin?’ 

“Oh--ho! Jackpot! I think we have a jackpot!” 

Jigen looked up as Lupin waved a packet of letters, bound together with rough twine. The bundle looked like something out of a sappy romantic drama. They could have been used in a prop in a movie, they were so perfectly preserved. “Love letters! Early ICPO years! A lover left behind, maybe? Or a romance he wished he could rekindle?”

“Well, get to it,” Jigen said, waving one hand to get him moving. “Who are they from?”

Lupin slid one out of an envelope, and began to read to himself, mumbling under his breath in the French they were written in. “Holy… holy shit. Jigen. _Jigen._ ”

“What?”

Lupin waved the letters around, making them crinkle as they did. “It was a guy!”

That got Jigen’s attention. “A guy?”

“Holy fuck, Pops is gay!” 

Jigen’s brows lifted so high Lupin could look him in the eyes without Jigen removing his hat. 

“His name’s Henri, and he was his _senpai_ ,” Lupin was beaming now, grabbing on to the new possibility of an answer. “Oh my God-- he was having an affair with this guy.”

Jigen felt his guts flip-flop uncomfortably, and put his eyes back on the scribbles in the margins. “So what? Happens all the time.”

“What, gay love affairs?”

“Saw it all the time on base,” Jigen said, lifting his narrow shoulders in a shrug. “They figure they’re so far from home, it doesn’t count because it’s a guy, or whatever. Any port in a storm, any hole you can stick it in, I guess.”

Jigen had _been_ one of those men, but Lupin didn’t need to know that. A sub in for a pretty wife back home once or twice, meaningless couplings to just get through the periods of loneliness in the middle of fuck all no where in whatever Middle Eastern country that America was bombing the shit out of that week. Things changed once he went mercenary - there were a lot less guys who needed a lover like Jigen, because they _could_ go home after assignments, not just wait for years for their hitch to end.

Lupin leaned back against a pile of boxes, shaking his head as he skimmed the letters. He was giddy like a teenager that just found their dad’s porno mags - excited at the illicitness of seeing into someone else’s love life. 

When Jigen looked up from yet another case file, that expression was gone.

“What?”

“He’s dead,” Lupin said, all the merriment over the secret affair wiped right off his face. “Killed by that piece of shit commissioner who put him up to shooting Zenigata and framing us up for it, remember?”

“What the fuck?” Jigen tried to peer over the boxes. “You mean the time we had to save him from the crematorium _?_ ”

“Yeah, that exact one!” Lupin paused a moment, sitting up and straightening. He cleared his throat, and then spoke in a perfect mimic of Zenigata’s voice: “ _Dear Henri, I write this despite knowing you will never read this, because I must put my words of gratitude down somewhere. So let it be written, yes? Your funeral was today, and I traveled to Toulouse to be there. I met your family. Your sons tried very hard to be brave, and I’m sure you would be proud of them. You raised two very fine, upstanding young men. I met your ex-wife, and she immediately knew how things were between us. There was no resentment, though, and for that I was grateful--”_

“Stop!” Jigen snapped off the word in his mouth. “Just stop, Lupin. There’s looking for pining and yearning, and then there’s getting into the past business between Zenigata and a dead man. Have some fuckin’ class.”

Lupin didn’t look up. He continued to read, just in silence. Jigen forced himself to look at the case files even if he didn’t really _read_ them. 

When he looked up again, Lupin was putting the letters back the way they hand found him, and did not speak of them again. The giddy grin was gone, and the curl of his mouth had flattened out. Whatever else he’d read had taken away the joy of this glimpse into Zenigata’s private life, and he dug back into the box for another lead.

“Well, that guy isn’t it. They broke it off months before the guy died,” Lupin said, not looking up from his rummaging. “Apparently Pops wanted to go home and work some things out with his wife.”

“They always do,” Jigen muttered.

Lupin didn’t have a witty comeback, and they lapsed into their work in silence again. 

At least Jigen was enjoying his reading. Knowing what really happened -- and sometimes what was outright fabrication to cover Zenigata’s occasional collusion with Lupin’s merry band of thieves in the name of the greater good -- was illuminating in how the old man’s brain worked. The real story was being told in the notes scribbled at the edge of the pages, and he could start to hear Zenigata’s voice as he read them.

“Well, that’s his early years covered,” Lupin said, leaning back after he closed up the box. “Who knew he was a prolific correspondent! Lots of handwritten letters. Hanshichi, friends, his ex-wife, a couple to his daughter… those were all marked ‘Return To Sender’, though.”

“Harsh,” Jigen said. Another thing he had in common with Zenigata - ditching out on his kids. The reason might be different, but Jigen knew his were better off without him in their lives. Who needed a Dad who didn’t know anything except how to shoot a gun? “My reading isn’t so bad. Nothing traumatic like dead boyfriends, so far.”

Lupin’s expression continued to slip into sad lines, mouth drawn and eyes drooping. “Maybe this is a bust.” 

“You think so?” 

“Yeah. His early years aren’t yielding anything promising,” he said. Then Lupin leaned back in his seat and pulled over the box labeled TOKYO METRO. 

After a few minutes, Jigen asked, “Anything good?”

“More stuff about his book,” Lupin said as he thumbed through file after file. “Looks like these are cases he did at home -- between bouts of chasing me.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Uh, an insurance fraud supervillain Bomber, which I think I remember hearing about,” Lupin supplied, shaking his head as he considered the words that just came out of his mouth. “We were in France at the time.”

“Supervillain? Like out of a comic book?”

“Kinda?” Lupin shrugged once, still skimming each file as he found it, flipping over the pages. “Then… a kid who was stalked by an assassin. Someone who tried to kill Zenigata's -- ex wife? Fuck, that had to be rough. A… uhm. Ah. Fuck.” 

“What?”

“Somebody killed his best friend while he was in town.”

“Jesus Christ, does this guy get to have _anything_ and not have the world burn it to the ground?” Jigen asked, disliking how much shit the inspector had waded through to get where he was now. “Nice guys finish fucking last.”

“No kidding.” Lupin held out what Jigen surmised would have been the chapter, and he took it to read. “Apparently he was some genius super scientist. Made some amazing strides in energy production, and didn’t monetize it fast enough.”

It hadn’t been finished, Jigen realized. A few lustreless paragraphs filled two pages before it stopped halfway down the third page. The broad strokes of Zenigata’s handwriting sent one last message to his dead friend: _I’m sorry, I’m not good enough to tell your story._

Jigen passed back the papers, watching Lupin put them away. 

Soon Lupin was resting his arm on the OLD STUFF box, with another Tokyo Metro file braced against his knees. He drummed his fingers against the side of it, staccato beat quickly moving from distracting to irritating. 

“Goddamn, stop!” Jigen finally blurted. “Just let it out, man, and stop it with the fingers!”

“I just feel like…” Lupin dug into his jacket from where he’d hung it on a box. He tapped out a smoke as he tried to corral his thoughts into something coherent, using the lighting of the cigarette to give him time to get himself together. “You know, I didn’t know him at all. I didn’t know he was-- gay or bi or whatever. I didn’t know he had a life outside of work. Or cases outside of ours.”

“What the fuck do you think he did, get put in cold storage?” Jigen asked, brows furrowing and pushing his hat up again. “You think he got thawed out only when you’re doing something?”

“No!” Lupin said, before he took a long drag. He tilted his head back, and slowly exhaled smoke. “No, I just… I just… Look, I know Pops is amazing. He’s the only guy who keeps up with us, when everybody else is out there eating our dust. But… he found time to do all this, too. You know what that takes?”

“I got an idea, yeah,” Jigen told him. He was running with Lupin right there beside him. He knew what it would be like, trying to keep up to them and having a life outside of it, too. It was something even Jigen couldn’t manage. Goemon came the closest, and his outside life was still hyperfocused on things that related to the work he did with Lupin.

“Look at this shit,” Lupin gestured vaguely toward the piles of boxes with his empty hand. “This guy… there’s so much here. Little day planners from the days before cellphones, handwritten letters, fading photos. He has _history._ Why didn’t I know he had history?”

“Not like you ever sat down and had a beer with the guy,” Jigen pointed out, feeling his guts shiver again. He didn’t like where this was going. He didn’t like it one bit. Lupin wasn’t just facing up to the challenge now, it wasn’t just a timed puzzle he needed to beat. It was becoming _personal_.

When Lupin got personal, people got hurt. Usually Lupin himself, most of all.

“He’s been a pain in my ass for nearly twenty goddamn years, but he’s the only person who could ever _keep up,_ ” Lupin said, before he took another drag. “Where’s a fucking ashtray in here, anyway?”

“I saw one on the desk,” Jigen said and grabbed it for him. “Here.”

Lupin tapped off the ash from his cigarette rather than let it fall among the files and papers that surely would light up like a tinderbox if hot ash got on the wrong documents. He was still frowning, staring at the offending Tokyo Metro file against his knees. “Anyway, I like Pops -- I really do. But now I wonder what stories his dead friend Kurashina could have told, you know? Of what he was like before… before there was a Lupin.”

“Guess we’ll never know,” Jigen said, looking down at another chapter resting in his own lap. 

“Like I said,” Lupin repeated once he had his third drag. “It’s crazy. I never knew. I should have known. What am I doing, not knowing my rival the way he knows me?”

“What would it have gotten you? Insults to throw? Humiliation? Targeting the people he loves? We both know you wouldn't have done that.” Jigen let his own lips twist up before he stuck his own cigarette between them. “You’re an asshole, but you’re not a fucking asshole.”

“Thanks,” Lupin said, rolling his eyes. “But-- man. I feel like I’ve missed out somehow. I should have known, then. I should have.”

“Known when?”

“When he stuck me on that tiny island and seemed set to live there the rest of his days to make sure I stayed in it,” Lupin said, rolling his cigarette between his fingers. 

“I remember that. You didn’t say much about what happened,” Jigen nudged him a little. Whatever it was, he couldn’t let it fester. Lupin was already building up too much feeling over this bullshit.

“It just seemed-- private,” Lupin said, chewing his lower lip for a moment. He let his gaze wander over the books and papers. “Intimate.”

Jigen watched him as Lupin looked down at the boxes again. He watched the way Lupin’s jaw tensed, the way he played with his cigarette between his lips when his nerves got to him.

Did Zenigata see Lupin like this? Would he know the signs of his stress? He was certain he knew the answer. Zenigata would ask him what was wrong, in this moment, like Jigen could have done. But Jigen didn’t. Jigen knew better.

Jigen was beginning to worry, though, who might see Lupin like he did; sometimes dewy-eyed, sometimes in his sharp brilliant lines, sometimes battered to shit but still triumphant.

Maybe, Jigen thought for a moment, maybe it was Lupin? Watching the slope of Lupin’s jaw work back and forth as he gave in to grinding his teeth, the way he focused single-mindedly on the paper in front of him, Jigen had to wonder. Who else would know Lupin so well, to get as close to the truth of the man as could be known after all these years?

Who else would write at the bottom of yet another case file something so sad?

_I wish I could ask Lupin about what happened beneath the castle. What happened with Clarisse. Why did he do it, when there was nothing in it for him but the satisfaction of being a hero? Someday, should I get that drink with him, I will ask about it straight away._

_I want to know what he was thinking, when he gave that girl that side of himself. Why can’t he give that side of himself to more people? What made him steal only her heart, and left the riches behind? Why can’t he be the hero instead of the scoundrel full time? Why is the line between a good man and a bad one so blurry? I thought I understood justice, once. Thought it took a hard man to dispense it, and molded myself to that image. But Lupin has taught me that sometimes you need bad men to do good things._

_But what does that make me? I failed so often when I was young, not understanding what Lupin did: flexibility among the most important of those lessons. But now I think I do understand: Arsene Lupin III is a thief and a scoundrel, yes. But by the end of the day, he is a good man who does good things as often as he does bad. In that, maybe the scales are balanced. Maybe that’s justice, and I somehow didn’t understand. Maybe I am the one who is somehow lacking._

Jigen dipped his head, teeth fastening on his lip. 

“What’s got you upset?”

“Just-- reading old cases. Bad times in some of them, that’s all. Stirring old memories.” Jigen stuffed the case back in the box and got up. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks for the company,” Lupin said, watching Jigen rise.

“No problem. I’m gonna go sit in the garden for a little bit, get some air.”

“Alright, Jigen.” Lupin flashed him a devil-may-care smile that they both knew was fake. “Be prepared to go at any minute if I find a good lead.”

“Oh, I will.” Jigen lied. 

He knew the truth already. Who else would Pops never admit to pining for, but the man who he could never possibly attain? He understood the same as Jigen did: no one could steal Lupin’s heart. Not even Fujiko, not anymore. 

Zenigata was as good as dead, and Jigen could only think, _Godspeed brother; at least you won’t have to live with it the rest of your days, with him sitting right there next to you in the car._


	5. The Truth About Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is never enough. Actions born from love? That's one trick Lupin can't perform on command, no matter what he may think. Loving someone is not the same as reciprocation of their love.
> 
> Zenigata has known the game was rigged from the start. Now if everybody else would just listen and leave him alone, he could die in peace. But if they do, what peace can Lupin find?

Zenigata woke to soft singing, luring him to consciousness with a thread of melody. Because of the sweet song, he assumed he was dead and closed his eyes again. He didn’t particularly feel like facing his sins or finding out what reincarnation would look like. Instead, he just wanted to not exist. Blissful nothingness. No pain.

The pain’s presence told him he wasn’t dead, and after a few more minutes of listening he realized it was Mine Fujiko stationed at his bedside, currently on watch for changes in his health. She had something in her hands, cradled against her knees. She was smiling as she thumbed through it, as if the contents pleased her.

Then he realized it was his and Haruka’s wedding album.

“Fff-- Pu--” He tried to tell her off, tell her to put it down, tell her to get out. Nothing came up but blood. 

“Oh!” Fujiko put the book aside, and grabbed quickly for the collection of cloth kerchiefs they had set at his bedside. “Here, here -- spit, it’s okay.”

“Get your hands off-- my stuff!”

Fujiko was confused for the moment, before she suddenly realized what he was talking about. She put one delicate hand to her cheek and gave a little laugh. “You caught me. Sorry, but we’re all still digging for clues on who your mystery lady might be.”

“S’no lady,” Zenigata said, head swimming as he lay back down. “S’nobody.”

It was definitely not Lupin. It could never be Lupin. After all, if it was Lupin, he might as well borrow the Walther and shoot himself now. It would at least be quick, then. Quick and clean, no more lingering. 

“Do you think camellias will sprout from my corpse?” he asked, the grotesque thought suddenly occupying the whole of his mind. They’d climb up his throat and he’d become some ornate, ex-human planter for a new cursed bit of flora. That’d be how he’d die. In slow agony, feeding something awful.

“What a morbid thought!” Fujiko put a hand to his brow, leaning over him, brown curls spilling down over her shoulders. “Zenigata? Do you know who I am? Do you know what’s been happening?”

He looked up at her through the frame of his half-closed eyes. His long eyelashes rendered her hazy, dreamlike. She was a beautiful woman, but looking up at her as she was haloed by the ceiling light made her radiant. 

“...heh. Last time I saw you like this it was -- Montreal,” he said, remembering crisp mountain air that didn’t come laden with the scent of death. “What, five years back? Six?”

“Well, aren’t you wicked?” Her small mouth, too plush for words, curved up into a little sly smile. “Come back to the land of the living and the first thing you remember is when we last slept together?” 

“It was just--” He focused up on her face; she’d been blonde then, he remembered. Hadn’t been too long after Cagliostro, but soon he’d be in America getting arrested for a crime he didn’t commit (and would later commit in force, colluding with Lupin.) “I remembered. You always stopped to look down before you slipped out. Checking to make sure I was out.”

Fujiko slid her fingers through his hair, and then smiled. “It was the only time I ever saw you peaceful. The rest of the time you were riding Lupin’s ass from coast to coast.”

Zenigata groaned, turning his head to the side. He gave a little cough, and then said, “Don’t remind me.” It was definitely time for a subject change. 

He seized the most obvious thing, since it was right there in her lap. “Why are you going through my wedding album?”

“Lupin has us trying to get to know the man behind Zenigata-keibu, of course. The better to ferret out who you might be head over heels for.” She sat back, hands on her knees, voice coquettish. “You can tell me, you know. It’s alright. I can find them without Lupin’s help if you don’t want him involved.”

“A kind offer, but-- no.” Zenigata laughed, the noise scraping through his throat. “There’s no one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

Fujiko watched him now, and he felt himself breaking out into a sweat. Fujiko might look like an angel when one was looking at her through the haze of infatuation or lust, but she was a devil with a scalpel when she wanted to be, cutting away down to the bone of want and desire when she needed to know what to exploit. 

“No one, Zenigata?” The words were so light as she started to cut into him, he barely felt when she started to work down to the bone. “Or no one you can reasonably _have?_ ”

“No one,” he repeated. Lying to a pro liar was a fool’s game, but he did it anyway. 

Fujiko watched him, and then reached out to help him up so he could sip some water, before she put him back on his futon and tucked him back in. “If you’re sure,” she said.

“I’m sure. Mmm, ‘dead to rights,’ yes? That’s the phrase?” English wasn’t his best language. Wasn’t even his third or fourth best. 

“Not quite, but I get the idea,” Fujiko said.

“Is Lupin digging into my stuff?”

“Lupin is doing research.”

“That’s digging into my stuff.” Zenigata pushed himself back up, only to find that Fujiko’s toned arms planted him right back down.

“You’re not moving out of this bed except for bathroom breaks and meals,” she said. She was the best bare handed combatant after Goemon, and the hard body under her comfortable clothes could make her deadly with just her hands. In Zenigata's current condition, Lupin’s noodly limbs could probably have kept him down, but there was no arguing with her strength.

“You all need to leave,” he said, wriggling again and failing to even prop himself up.

“We’ll leave when the work is done,” Fujiko told him.

“When I’m dead, you mean,” Zenigata said. He grabbed for her hand, since she wasn’t going to lift it form his chest. “Please, don’t-- don’t do this. I’ve made peace with it, Fujiko. I’ve had weeks to do so. I know you can get him to go. You’re the only one who can.”

Fujiko regarded him coolly, the scalpel still gleaming in her eyes. “What do you want me to do to get Lupin to leave when he’s set on a thing?”

“Lie!” Zenigata hissed, squeezing her hand. “Lie. It’s your goddamn skillset, Fujiko, and you’re damned good at it. Tell him you know who it is. Lead him away. By the time he realizes he’s been duped, I’ll be dead and he won’t have to _watch_.”

Fujiko stared down at him for a long moment, her face still soft but her smile now gone. She blurred herself so easily, masking whatever it was she really thought in the wreath of her beauty like it was a veil she could lift or drop only by her desire. She stroked his hair again, and leaned over to kiss his brow.

“You don’t fool me, old man,” she said, whispering in his ear. “I know who you love, and I know why you want him to leave. This isn’t for his sake. It’s for yours.”

“You don’t know anything,” Zenigata said, turning his face from hers.

“I know when two people who love the same person climb into bed together, they’re not fucking _each other_ , you know?” Fujiko said. There wasn’t any unkindness there, no barbs to flay him with. Just the simple statement of fact. “It’s okay. I was doing it too.”

“I didn’t!” It came out a pleading lie, but it came out all the same. 

“We were both looking for something that wasn’t there. But it made us feel good, didn’t it? That’s all I wanted.” Fujiko sat up straight again. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear with one hand, and kept holding his fingersin the other. “I don’t begrudge you any of it. People want what they want, even if it’s crazy or hurtful.”

Zenigata had no answer for that. He just rolled over and curled on the far side of the futon. He was a coward, then, and too sick to be strong enough to haul himself out. 

“You know how this ends, then,” Zenigata said, face turned against his pillow. “If I was to love him, I would be waiting for the pyre.”

“I know how it _can_ end,” Fujiko said. She was sitting there as serene as Kanon, Goddess of Mercy, so full of compassion. “but not with certainty, that it will.”

“So why not take him away, so neither of us have to suffer more than is necessary?” It didn’t make any sense. Taking Lupin away and making sure he didn’t ever find out that the flowers bloomed for him would be a balm for Lupin's soul. He tried, he failed, Lupin would grieve and move on. Staying would make Lupin look at someone he killed two-fold. First he had created the wake that sucked Zenigata into the curse, and then he could not be the cure for the curse when Zenigata's own feelings, whatever they may be, did not _reciprocate._

That word haunted Zenigata. The priest had been very specific - your heart yearns for them. They must reciprocate. Accept, and return in kind. Lupin would have to love him like he did Lupin, and Zenigata knew that was simply not possible. Jigen, Fujiko, Goemon -- Lupin loved these people, but he did not love Zenigata. Camaraderie and competition were one thing. But the others, they were lovers, friends, family. 

Zenigata gave up on family a long time ago.

“Because it isn’t fair,” Fujiko said.

“Since when have you cared about fair?” Zenigata shot back over his shoulder, glowering at her from the corner of his eye.

“When it’s Lupin, I care,” she said. Fujiko stood and lifted up the album as she rose. “I’m going to tell him your wife isn’t it, so he doesn’t bother her.”

Zenigata rolled over, propping himself up from his back. “How did you know--?”

“Goemon said she came by, and stayed late,” Fujiko said, tucking the book under her arm. She smiled, though it was a little crooked, a touch wry. “You’re too much of a cop not to try. After all, the first suspect in a murder is the deceased’s romantic partners, either current or past.”

“You know, you would have been one hell of a cop,” Zenigata said without a smile.

“I know,” she said, taking it in stride. “You’re one hell of a thief, too, when you let yourself be.”

“I’ve never stolen hearts, Fujiko.” 

She tapped the leather cover with one modestly manicured nail. “Oh, there’s a lot of evidence right here to refute that statement, Zenigata-keibu. You stole countless hearts over the years. That's why we’re all here, ready to fight for you. That’s four hearts, right there.”

“I stole nothing,” he rolled his eyes so hard he dropped back against the pillow. “I don’t know when you started chasing back, though.”

“I have a few guesses,” Fujiko said. A nightingale floorboard sounded in the narrow hall. Fujiko slid open the shoji door. He didn’t look back, didn’t hear the murmuring between the two. Whoever it was, they were keeping their voice down. Lupin or Jigen.

“Can you sit tight on your own for a little bit, Zenigata?” she asked once the murmuring ceased. “We’re going to have breakfast ready soon.”

“Just leave me alone,” he said.

“I will, for now.” The nightingale floorboard squeaked, and then Fujiko and her companion vanished further into the house. 

+++

After Zenigata was summoned for breakfast, he found the one left behind to do the cooking was Jigen. The man had his suit coat off and was standing there in a waistcoat and dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to his biceps.

“Sorry, Pops, you won’t get anything Japanese from me,” Jigen began as he moved eggs around a pan. “Goemon’s out looking into other mystics and shit, and I don’t know how to make any of that traditional stuff.”

“It’s fine,” Zenigata said as he sat down at the low table. “I’ve subsisted on free hotel continental breakfasts for years. Everything’s going to taste like blood and roots anyway.”

“That’s the life, eh?” Jigen didn’t laugh at his own jibe. Instead, he started to plate up. 

“Where’s Lupin?” Zenigata didn’t want to see him, despite the question. He just wanted to know what trouble Lupin was getting into in Zenigata’s house.

“Sleeping, finally. He’s, uh.” Jigen plated up his own breakfast, and sat down across the table from Zenigata. “He sort of does this thing, when he gets a problem he has to solve. I’ve seen him lock himself in a cabin for months, not shave and barely eat, to build just one device to crack security on a place.”

Zenigata’s brows went up, but the information checked out with what he knew of Lupin’s modus operandi. “And how does that apply here?”

“Well, he locked himself in your office and is going through your memoirs with a notepad to catalogue every close friend and lover you’ve ever had, for starters,” Jigen said between mouthfuls of egg. “You’re in your fifties, so that’s a lot of memoir to cover.”

Vaguely affronted and uncertain why anyone could imagine fifty years was all that long, Zenigata put down his fork and glowered at Jigen. “You’re maybe five years younger than me, Jigen Daisuke.” 

“It’s not even the years, it’s the mileage. We both did a lot of living, Pops,” Jigen pointed at him with his fork. “Anyway. He runs hot and cold a lot. Like -- manic, but not like manic depressive. I’m not a doctor, I don’t fucking know what you’d call it.”

“Rapidly falling back and forth between high periods and low periods?” There were a lot of things that could describe that, but he wasn’t a doctor. A thousand different profilers had come to him with the ‘secrets of Lupin III’s mind!’ but not one had been even close to the mark. Quack science, just like that Shake Handz and PeopleLog garbage.

“Don’t know if I’d call it rapid, but something like that, yeah. Ain’t the first time I watched over somebody that got the crazy,” Jigen said, before he put another forkful of egg in his mouth. “Lupin’s just a lot easier to deal with. He’s not gonna do anything like kill himself with a bottle of pills. You just gotta know the signs.”

“Like what?” Zenigata asked. Jigen knew Lupin better than anyone. Even Zenigata himself could compare to that level of insider knowledge.

“If he’s taken off his pants to work, you know he’s serious,” Jigen said with a straight face, as if that was not the weirdest thing he'd said this morning. “Guy’s fucking feral if he’s got his pants off. But only his pants. If he’s working in his underwear, no clothes at all, then he’s probably laying on the floor moaning about something and is gonna probably sleep with a six pack of beer or a bottle of cheap scotch every night for a while.”

Zenigata was very quiet then, eating his food. The new information fit with what he knew of Lupin; mercurial, highly emotional, genius, but prone to mood swings. The information about the clothing? That was a tidbit he didn’t know before, but Lupin running around manic in his boxer shorts was hardly that shocking of an image. He’d caught Lupin in more compromising clothing and positions. Hell, Lupin had caught _him_ in more compromising clothing and positions.

“You know he’s going to go all out about this. You’re important to him,” Jigen added quietly. “He won’t quit until he knows who it is.”

“Or until I die.”

Jigen pushed his hair back from his face, and finally said, “Do you need help?”

“Help doing what?” Zenigata sighed, taking a long drink of his black coffee and hoping it would wash the sour taste from his mouth. 

“Dealing with Lupin-- with everything,” Jigen said quietly.

“There’s nothing to deal with,” he repeated for what felt like the thousandth’s time. The denials were starting to grind his teeth down. “You all should leave. You can’t fix this.”

“I know that,” Jigen said, looking at him from behind the mass of bangs that had fallen forward into his face. “He doesn’t. He won’t until you tell him.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” He couldn’t savage the words in his mouth, so Zenigata ate more aggressively instead.

Jigen shrugged, and went back to eating. 

There was a period of silence which was anything but companionable. Zenigata felt the tension stretching taut, like one of Lupin’s stupid trick yo-yos. God, how long had it been since he pulled out one of those? Years, and years…

“Took a walk in the garden last night,” Jigen popped out that non sequitur, and Zenigata lurched out of his thoughts.

“Goemon cleaned it up a bit the other day,” Zenigata said, brows furrowing. He took up his kerchief when he felt a cough coming, and caught it in time.

“Noticed something, though, when I went out this morning.”

“What?” Zenigata felt cold creep up his spine. He didn’t like where this was going.

“You don’t have any camellia bushes.”

Of course it would be Jigen, he realized. Fujiko went by hunches and behavior, but that can be misread. She could be convinced to indulge doubt. Lupin seeing camellias were there were none, though, that was damning proof. Jigen was a bodyguard. He was paid to observe, to watch, to protect. Of course he’d notice. Then he’d verify. Now, he was closing in to do what he did best: protect Lupin.

“What are you going to do?” Zenigata asked, wiping blood from his mouth.

“Don’t know yet,” Jigen said, putting his fork down. The table was suddenly too narrow, they were far too close to be comfortable. Jigen leaned over it, resting his arms and putting his weight even further forward. “You’re a good man, but you’re a realist. Lupin doesn’t love folks. He doesn’t return feelings. Great at the act, but not so much the follow through.”

“Realist,” Zenigata said, and shook his head. “No. I _yearn_. That’s what I was told. A dreamer, a hopeful heart.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” 

“Fuck you, Jigen.”

Jigen rubbed his face with his free hand and let out a sigh that made him seem to deflate, slouching even further into his seat. “Look. He cares about you. Really does. If you don’t show up after a crime or two -- even just stupid lunch money gigs or sightings -- he goes looking for you. You matter to him. More than you know.”

“Do you think that means he loves me?” Zenigata fixed him with a look, and Jigen shrank even further. 

“No. I know it doesn’t.” Jigen pushed his hair back, and sighed. “Look, Pops. Tell me what you want?” 

“I want you all gone,” Zenigata said, keeping his voice low. “I want you to lead him on some bullshit quest away from here. Use anyone you like. Elena Gotti, my ex, anything. Just get him a--a--”

The next cough came and wracked him hard, leaving him leaning against the table trying to keep himself upright. Jigen was up a moment later, plates on the table sliding and clattering when his knee knocked against it in the process

Cussing under his breath, Jigen stumbled over, hands hovering like he didn’t know what to do at first.. He settled on keeping Zenigata from toppling over by pulling him half into his lap. “Pops? Pops, this is bad--” 

Zenigata fisted his hands in Jigen’s shirt when he lifted him up. He was stronger then he looked, Zenigata thought as the fireworks behind his eyes began to fade. But then he saw his own pale hand clutching Jigen’s shirt. Over the last four weeks, he’d lost weight and muscle mass. Maybe it wasn’t that Jigen was strong, but that the flowers in his lungs were sucking him dry. 

“Get him out of here,” he groaned. Fujiko would be strange, but Jigen would listen to sense. Zenigata knew he would. “It’s going to be soon, Jigen. They come up more and more. Don’t make him be here. Don’t make _me_ look at him when I die. Please, Jigen!”

“I-- I’ll do my best, Pops,” Jigen said quietly. “I will. I pr--”

“Hey, is that breakfast I smell?” Lupin’s voice floated down the hall, and one of the nightingale floorboards creaked.

Jigen and Zenigata both looked at the doorway. One glanced with resignation and the other with mounting horror as the footsteps grew closer.

“In--Intercept him--” Zenigata brought up blood and blooms. “Don’t let him see--”

“Jigen-chaaaaan?” Lupin’s voice trilled, ever closer. “Pops?” 

Jigen was trying to help Zenigata up, but it was too late. Lupin had already cleared the doorway. He stood there for a moment, bewildered at the plateau before him: Zenigata pushing Jigen away with bloody hands, while Jigen did his best to hold on and keep Zenigata from toppling over completely.

Lupin’s steps were quick, and Zenigata increased his struggle. He had to get away.

“Pops! Pops, calm down. Hey, Jigen, what the hell is going on?”

“Get away from me!” Zenigata demanded, finally pushing out of Jigen’s grip only to have to smack at Lupin’s hands. “I don’t need you! I don’t want you here!”

“Tough,” Lupin said, as he reached out to grab the dirty kerchief and mop up blood. “We’re not going any-- where--”

Zenigata watched as he stopped, kneeling down with a sticky, clinging mass of flowers between them. Lupin scooped up a pile of blossoms in his cupped hands and watched as they melted to nothing, slipping between his fingers to hit the floor again as fat droplets of blood.

“Pops?” His voice was so small, so unLupinlike that Zenigata wanted to be sick. Bring up the eggs and the coffee from his roiling stomach, just get everything out of himself, empty himself of everything he could possibly be feeling. He especially wanted the heartache gone, the hurt he felt as he realized Lupin knew, and Lupin had to understand that Zenigata was going to die with certainty.

“Get out,” he rasped.

“Pops, no, talk to me--”

“Get out!” Zenigata shook Jigen off, and the gunman went to his boss’s side. “Get out, all of you! I’m going to be dead soon, just-- leave me alone to die in peace! I’ve had fucking flowers growing in my lungs for a month, Lupin. Just take your filthy pack of criminals and get out! I don’t want to die having you be the last thing I see!”

“Pops, no! Th--this is good news! I can see them, so its-- it’s me. I mean, I don’t know why I didn’t figure this out sooner,” Lupin was gearing up, now, sounding so bright and happy that his eagerness for a solution rendered him blind and deaf to the obvious. 

He grabbed another kerchief. scrubbing his palms as clean as he could get them. Then he reached out to cup Zenigata’s face between his palms as tenderly as he would with any lover.

“Tell me you love me, Zenigata,” he urged. “Then I can _help._ ”

“Help? How are you going to help, you moron?” Zenigata pushed at him again, before he focused on getting up. Lupin didn’t try to hold him against his will, but instead followed him up as he stood.

“Because I love you!”

Zenigata stopped. He could feel blood dripping off his chin, down all over his undershirt. 

Lupin was looking at him with wide guileless eyes, arms open. It was Lupin at his most pure, his most boyish, the biggest lie the world was ever told: that this wasn’t a dangerous criminal who could break small countries with a screwdriver, a piece of wire, and half an ounce of his own cleverness.

“Shut your lying mouth,” Zenigata said, but it was drowning in the blood on his tongue.

“No, Pops, seriously,” Lupin said, gesturing with one hand. “Tell me you love me. It doesn’t work if you don’t confess!” 

“It’s not going to work, you idiot!” 

Lupin’s brows knitted over his nose. “Why _not_?”

“Because you don’t love me!” Zenigata blurted, blood and petals going out again. “You don’t!”

“Sure I do, Pops!” Lupin said, like it was as simple as some school yard game. “Seriously, spit it out! The faster you confess, the faster you’re going to get better.”

“Is that… really what you think love is?” Zenigata asked him. He searched his face, starting to see the cracks in the facade. Lupin’s cheery mask was going eggshell, hairline fractures starting to spread as his jawline got tighter. His smile was getting brittle, like bleached bones in the desert.

Jigen stepped up behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Lupin, don’t.”

“I’m sorry, but he has to do his part if we’re gonna make this work,” Lupin said, elbowing back against his partner. “He has to confess and have love returned! Which is fine, I love the guy in spades.”

“Lupin--” Jigen wasn’t deterred, shaking Lupin’s shoulder again. “Lay the fuck off.” 

“Seriously, Jigen, you’re not helping,” Lupin said, half turning to push his partner away. 

Jigen was already moving to get between them, elbowing his way get to around Lupin. Whether he moved to protect Lupin from the truth or Zenigata from further badgering was anybody’s guess. “You’re not helping him, either!”

“Shut up, both of you!” Zenigata finally got it out of his mouth, and every word came with savage motion, cutting the air before him with his hands, trying to keep some space between them. He wouldn’t let them back him into a corner, he’d force them to back down.

“Pops. Zenigata.” Lupin said each name in turn, before he dipped his voice, and invoked a name that he’d never said to Zenigata’s face before. “Koichi. Please. Help me help you.”

“Ah, there’s the Lupin that I ‘love’,” Zenigata said, laughing as it finally spilled free of him. It was a relief to have it said, then. “You aren’t thinking about anything except the treasure. The pride of the accomplishment. Another legend of Lupin III! The man who stole the inspector’s heart _and_ his life back. Well, _Arsene_ , let me tell you something: loving you is a death sentence.”

Lupin’s mouth opened, and worked for a moment, but no sound came from him. That was fine by Zenigata, as he had plenty to say.

“Do I love you? Ah, yes, dammit it all, yes, yes!” It was funny, and he could laugh at it now. How did he not realize, when the last thing he wanted was to pursue Lupin until the flowers made meat out of him. “I love you. I love to be so close to you, I love when you’re almost in my grasp. I love when you turn the tables and when you do good things. I love when you’re clever and just out of reach. It’s like loving cigarette smoke, Lupin.”

“The hell does that even mean? I love you, too!” Lupin’s voice was rising. “Wh-- you’re still bleeding--!”

“You don’t understand! You didn’t in the first place!” Zenigata said, putting his hands to his chest and shoving back hard. Jigen caught Lupin before he fell, but Zenigata didn’t stop to give them any relief. “You missed the biggest clue right in front of your face, Lupin! The tripwire that’ll keep you from your prize. It’s not about ‘I love you.’ It’s about reciprocation. You can love anyone! You probably do love me. Like me, at least, in your way. But reciprocate my feelings? The feelings I have for you? No. You don’t.”

The mask cracked, and there was honest to God panic bleeding through the fissures. Lupin was already striding forward, reaching out as he kept denying the truth. “No, Zenigata. This is not the end of this!”

“It is! You _lose_ , Lupin III! Sometimes you leave empty handed.” There was new dripping, but it wasn’t down his chin. Tears were collecting on his lashes, escaping his eyes to leave gleaming paths down his face. “I’ve gotten used to it. You’re like a drag on a cigarette-- a pleasant burn, but nothing you can hold forever. It’s an addiction, I suppose, because I kept coming back for it.”

“I refuse!” Lupin blurted, falling back on anger. He didn’t back down, eyes searching Zenigata’s face. The tear-tracks held him transfixed for a moment, before he locked gazes with Zenigata again. “You want to throw in the towel, old man, that’s fine, but I am Lupin III! I’m not going to just watch you roll over to die.”

“You are, because you _don’t reciprocate!”_ He coughed again, spat on the floor between them, and let the bloody flowers bring Lupin up short on crossing the space between them. “The feelings have to align, you goddamned fool! You don’t love me like I love you! The kami of the camellias poisoned her own heart because she longed for another to return her feelings when she was wed to a man she didn’t love. But do you know what that past Ishikawa did? He didn’t come in riding like a gentleman bandit to pluck her from this marriage she didn’t want! He left her there. He didn’t feel the same for her as she did for him.”

Lupin looked down at the flowers, and then up at Zenigata. Comprehension was only spurring the panic in his eyes to new heights. Zenigata had no reason to spare him anymore. Not now. Not after they’d invaded his home, pillaged his history, scraped him open looking for the root of the problem. He wasn’t going to stop until Lupin had to carve out his heart, too.

“That, you great fool, is why a simple ‘I love you’ hasn’t made my breath come easier,” Zenigata wheezed. “She wants people to suffer like she did, choking to death on a love that withered until it took her with it. She didn’t pick me just because I longed for reasons to touch you. She picked me because she rigged the game. Otherwise she would have gone for someone else. Someone you might possibly love as much as they love you.”

Jigen didn’t shrink under his gaze when Zenigata caught his eyes. There was no shame in his face. He’d resigned himself to his position years ago. He knew who he was and what he was about. What bliss that must be, to know and accept and never worry about asking for more.

Now Zenigata’s life depended on ‘more’, and it was never coming.

Lupin’s hands dropped to his side, sticken as he was, standing there with the knowledge that this was something he was powerless to fix. Completely, utterly helpless. The empty stare at the space between them told Zenigata all he needed to know: he hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

“Get out of my house,” Zenigata said, leaning down to pick up his kerchief. “I don’t want you here.”

Lupin didn’t move, so Zenigata walked right past him, wiping his mouth with the cloth. A futile gesture -- he was a filthy mess, each breath coming as a wheeze. He went down the hall, slid the door to his study open, and looked at the archaeological dig that the room had become. Piles of letters, pictures, all arranged by time among the boxes they’d come from. There was enough space cleared for a small man to sleep in a ball if he was bound and determined to rest where he worked. 

Zenigata picked up the jacket Lupin had left balled up like a pillow. Blue, this time. Sometimes he broke out the red one, and on rare occasions, green. The pink had been a brief mistake of the late eighties and early nineties, never to be repeated. They were all so young then, Zenigata thought, so vital and stupid and all the things that young people were, even himself. But all things come to an end, whether it was fashion mistakes or people’s lives. 

He brought the jacket up to his face for a moment; the scent that was uniquely Lupin was there, permeating every layer. The top notes of acidic pickles and crisp champagne that frequently defined a person’s first impression of the man as a mix of common criminal and gentleman thief. In the middle was something savory, like pork broth perhaps, mixed with subtle grease and gun oil and topped off with a finisher of latex and spirit gum. The base notes were the musky scent of stolen money and the mellow aroma of his Gitanes. It wasn’t a bad smell, even with the clashing layers. It was just Lupin’s smell. 

Zenigata dropped it from his face. A smear of blood spread luridly over it where he’d put his filthy hands on it, a big blot where his still-red chin had touched it. He pulled it toward him anyway. It was heavy in his hands.

“Hey, Pop-- Zenigata.” Jigen’s voice roused him from his thoughts. “I came to get Lupin’s stuff.”

“You leaving?”

Jigen refused to look at him, head turning aside. He had lovely cheekbones, Zenigata realized. Pretty to look at, but he wasn’t looking where Zenigata needed him to look.

“Funny the things you notice, when -- when it doesn’t matter anymore, isn’t it?” Zenigata said.

Jigen glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He waved one hand, hanging the jacket on the back of his desk chair with the other hand. “I’ve ruined Lupin’s jacket with blood. Just leave it here with the rest of the trash. Just get him out of here. Shit, take my credit card and buy tickets out of the country. Not like I’m going to be using them any time soon.”

“We-- look, don’t worry about us.” Jigen waved the offer away, looking down at his feet again. 

“I don’t.” Zenigata replied.

Muscles in Jigen’s jaw and neck jumped to sudden tension, standing out stark against his skinniness. Then he said, “Liar,” right before he left.

Zenigata didn’t care. The misdirection had worked. Watch the one hand, feel the barb, and you miss what the jacket was dropped over. 

He stayed there as the house went quiet, lights going out, before he stepped out to the engawa. He waited, watching three people shuffle out of the house, one after the other. Lupin side by side with Fujiko, who led him onward hand in hand. Jigen brought up the rear. 

Just before he crossed the threshold to leave the garden, Jigen glanced back, sweeping his hand from his head. He met Zenigata’s gaze, gave him a small salute with his hat over his chest, and then went back after Lupin, only replacing it on his head when he was through the garden gate.

Zenigata shut the shoji doors, sealing up the room again. Then, when he was alone, he picked up the jacket again, and then the holster he’d hidden with it. He’d noticed the weight of the jacket just as Jigen arrived, and knew that he had finally found the ticket out of his pain. The Walther was empty, but there were two clips in Lupin’s jacket. More than enough to do what he needed.

There was still work to be done, though. Letters to write, final chapters to commit to paper. Time to close the book, and let all this go. But there was a relief in the weight of the gun in one hand and the clips the other. The Walther would see him to the door when it was time to leave. He had this one last choice, this final fistful of power. He’d spend it wisely, when the time came. 

For now, the work was calling, and though he was prepared for the end, he knew others weren’t. Ami, Toshiko -- there were so many things to say. He had to get them out, while he still had the time to do so. 

He put the Walther in his desk drawer with it’s clips, and left Lupin’s bloody jacket hanging over the back of his chair. He was as prepared as he was ever going to be, so he reached for paper and pen.

+++

Fujiko paid for the hotel they all fell into, with the Fiat hidden in the parking garage beneath it to prevent notice on the street. It was the nicest place to land after a massive failure. Expensive, well appointed, bar included. 

Immediately upon coming into the hotel suite, Lupin went up into a luxury bathroom with what could only be called a porn set shower. It was huge, with six different heads that sprayed him from six different angles while he tried to scrub the last two days from his skin. It wasn’t even noon and he wanted to sleep for the rest of the week. The small bags they had packed were still packed, so Lupin went straight from the shower to a hotel bathrobe. 

Jigen was gone when he walked out into the main room, so he dropped onto the couch. He spread himself out over as much of it as possible - head back, arms stretched along the back of it, legs splayed with the hang of the bathrobe barely keeping him decent. He did not move for an indeterminable amount of time.

There was the soft tick-tack of heels on tile in the entryway and the door was opened and closed. He did not get up.

“You look like you just survived a night of hard drinking and harder partying,” Fujiko said as she came up before him, standing there. “You should get some sleep.”

He refused to look at her, closing his eyes. “Slept last night.”

“But not in a bed, no?” Fujiko nudged his foot with the toe of her sensible kitten heels. She couldn’t be fancy, taking care of Pops. “Get some rest.”

He did not open his eyes. “Resting right now.”

Fujiko sighed, and Lupin’s heart fell down two more steps. Then she took one hand in his and gave him a tug.

“Come to bed,” she said, and against his better judgment, he let her lead him there. 

“Jigen wouldn’t do this,” he said. That felt important, somehow. Jigen would not nursemaid him. Would let him wallow for a little bit, at least, before he fell back on his own bad habits and start looking for work. 

“Do what?” Fujiko asked anyway.

Then he realized what he really meant. What would Jigen do, if it had been him? He would have just eaten his Magnum and been done with it. Wouldn’t have said a goddamn thing. Just found out what was going on, tell Lupin he was going out for smokes, and later Lupin would find him as a John Doe in a morgue somewhere with his brains blown out.

Jigen would cripple Lupin to protect him. But Jigen wasn’t here right now. The nightmare scenario was suddenly too close, turning Lupin’s skin clammy. “Where’s Jigen right now?”

“He’s at the hotel bar,” Fujiko assured him.

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes,” she said. She started undoing his belt. “He’s got to grieve in his own way.”

“And us?” Lupin let her take the robe away. “What are we doing?”

“Grieving,” she said. There was a rustle, he could see her dress at her feet when he looked down at the pile of plush cloth next to him. She stepped out of it, kicked her heels off, and then nudged him toward the bed. 

Lupin climbed in; he was on autopilot, he figured. Running on instinct. If you feel bad, do something that isn’t bad. If guilt or shame choked you up, wash it down with scotch. Some hurts meant you needed to find a beautiful woman and bury yourself between her thighs to tame the pain. Others required a dashing man who’d fuck the dark thoughts right out of your head. Whatever worked, worked. Try something new until you find what worked. Rinse and repeat the next time. Experiment. He hadn’t done blow in years but it suddenly sounded like a great idea, even if the last rational part of his brain was telling him ‘no, that’s a shitty idea and you should be ashamed of it.’

Fujiko slid into bed after him. A touch of her hand to the dimmer switch and the lights went out. He gave no resistance when she slid her arms around him, curling against his back. Her breasts were pressed against him, legs tangling with his own. Warm. Soft. All good things, Lupin thought.

He covered her hands with his own, and let himself drift. It was quiet here, and he was held. Safe. The most dangerous woman in the world and he felt safe in her arms.

“I tell you you’re amazing lately?” he asked.

“No, but it’s always nice to hear.”

He laid there, trying to trick his brain into the body; focus on sounds, smell, touch, taste. He knew the method was a good one, he’d used it a lot over the years. You grounded yourself in physical experience so your mind can’t wander off.

Fujiko was soft, but solid. Muscle in her limbs. Capable muscle, one of the few people that could go toe-to-toe with Pops and get him to a standstill when she went all out. She smelled like wine from the bar and the faintest whiff of her menthol Slims. Her breathing was even, but controlled. She was not sleeping, or even trying to. There was no slowing heart rate, no deepening breaths. Just her laying there, monitoring him the same as he was monitoring her.

He asked a question that only came up perhaps once a decade. “Did I do the right thing?” 

“Why are you worried about the ‘right’ thing, when there was no ‘right’ thing to do, Lupin?” Fujiko’s voice was patient and mild, like she was talking to a child instead of a grown man. Lupin appreciated that.

“Wasn’t there?” His brain was starting to wander, and so he curled his hands around hers. “Shouldn’t there have been something else we could do?” 

Fujiko held him tighter. “You gave him what he wanted.”

“Did I?” Lupin chanced a glance back, catching only the sight of her tousled brown hair.

“Yes,” she said with certainty, arms tightening again. “You can’t give him everything, but you can let him choose how to die, Lupin. If this is what he thinks is dignified, then we need to let him have it. Let him control the one last thing he can in the face of death.”

Lupin opened his eyes in the dark, extending one arm across the king-sized bed. He could fit another person in here easily. Let him die in a comfortable bed, instead of on a futon over tatami flooring.

“Why did he want to die like that, Fuji-chan?”

“Because he’s lived a hard life, and he doesn’t want a soft death,” Fujiko said, tightening her grip on him. “He told me once he’d been born in that house. I imagine he’s decided that’s where he wants to die, too.”

“When did he tell you?” 

“Ages ago, over dinner and drinks,” Fujiko told him. Her relationships with other men were fine by him, it was part of the deal. He knew that Zenigata sometimes numbered among those men on rare occasions, but he knew the rules: no jealousy, no infighting. Zenigata said nothing, and so Lupin said nothing. But Zenigata was dying now, and that seemed to change things.

“What did you guys get up to?” Zenigata’s life was over, right? Dead men tell no tales -- except via forensics, and Lupin thought that was the ultimate unreliable narrator anyway. “He never seemed like the -- type, you know? The love letters-- that was Zenigata. The affair part? Not so much.”

“He was complicated, just like you are,” Fujiko said, which was clearly a black card on the conversation. She wasn’t about to divulge too many secrets. “When he stopped being angry about the divorce, he got less mean. Didn’t matter how many times we were together, he blushed like a schoolboy. He was big. Awkward. Aware of his size and strength, always worried about hurting someone, even that first time. But he changed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have slept with him after the interrogation room. Do you remember how he was at the beginning?”

“Oh God. He fucked you before I did.” Lupin laughed, but the sound crackled at the edges. “Fucking asshole.”

“You mean I fucked him before I fucked you,” Fujiko corrected, sliding a verbal stiletto between his ribs. “Neither of you were in control of when the fucking got done.” 

“Ah, touche, touche, you’re right, my dear!” He exhaled, laughter escaping him again. “He was still such an asshole.”

She laughed, breath warm against the shell of his ear. “So were you.”

“Guilty as charged,” he said with pride.

“We were young,” she said, quiet. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt old until this moment,” Lupin said. Her arms were becoming a cage. He didn’t like it, didn’t like them pressing down with the weight of all their past on top of them. 

Sitting up, he surveyed the bedroom. Fujiko rolled onto her back beside him, watching him. He slouched there, resting his hands on his propped up knees, eyes adjusting to the dark. He could see the shape of the wardrobe, the dresser. He was glad he’d brought a few spare clothes on this trip - with the loss of his coat, he was going to have to fall back on whatever had been in the ramen-ya hide out… which hadn’t been much. They hadn’t used it in years upon years. The early nineties, maybe? No, there’d been no pink jackets there. Red ones, though, and the shirts and ties to go with them. 

“You know, I had forgotten all about him? I saw him when he was a green newbie, working under Hanshichi. He was so earnest, like some sort of giant puppy in a trenchcoat. I thought, ‘There’s a man who’ll never amount to anything. He’s going to be a beat cop all his life.’” He shook his head, and the laughter just kept coming back to him. Why was he laughing so much? “Man, I was so wrong. He followed me all across Japan. I thought I’d shook him when I went to Europe, and I did for a while. Then he crops up with Interpol! What a bad penny he was.”

“You humiliated his mentor,” Fujiko said, and she started tracing patterns on his back, each carefully manicured nail a physical sensation to focus on, a touch that kept him anchored in the bed. “That’s plenty of incentive for a man to improve. You might have slandered his personal integrity while you were at it, it’d get the same result.”

“By the time you came into the picture, he’d grown to really hate me,” Lupin said

“You were a hateable guy,” Fujiko laughed, and Lupin was sure she was imagining him being a prick at every given opportunity. He was, in fact, a shithead then. “Mr. ‘Mighty Fine Woman.’ Thought you knew so much.”

“Ah, but you were right-- you’re not a mighty fine woman.” Lupin leaned back, into her touch, and rolled to face her. “You are an _extraordinarily fine_ woman.”

It felt natural to fall into a kiss with her. Step A, compliment, Step B, kiss, Step C -- probably get humiliated with a knee to the jaw and a quick escape with only a flash of nipple to remember the moment by. To the outsider, it looked awful. To anyone who knew them, they knew it was part of the game agreed upon by both parties. The good days were filled with the chase, making the capture -- when it happened -- all the sweeter. 

He had his tongue in her mouth when some terrible voice asked him: _Did Zenigata feel the same way?_

Lupin had his hands in her hair a moment later, and Fujiko steered him from there. Rolling him back, she took his hands from her hair, and pressed them down above his head. Leaning over him, breasts swaying heavily as she settled over his hips.

He was soft, Lupin realized. Not a twitch. Not an ounce of lust. He should be halfway to fucking her by now, even with how things had ended. The body remembered even if the heart had tried to set things aside. But there was nothing, just a hollow echo and tremor of fear. 

“What’s wrong with me, Fujiko?”

She was still, as if she just realized it as well. No spark. So electric current when he palmed her breast. No breathing over the embers of their lust and letting the flame flare up again, tossing some fuel on it, and enjoying the burn while it lasted. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, putting a hand to his face. “You’ve been through a lot recently . Even your body knows that you need to rest. Roll over on your belly, and I’ll help you.”

Lupin obeyed while she got up and wandered down to the hotel bathroom. He dragged the pillow to him, pushing his face into it, trying to quiet his own breathing. It had suddenly become too loud in the empty room.

When she came back from the bathroom, Fujiko poured something onto his back, and then spread it over him with her hands. Then she started to work his tired muscles into something like jelly.

She was so very good with her hands, and the press of them gave him something to focus on. It meant he could quiet the thoughts he was having. He didn’t want to think about what Zenigata’s mass would be like in the bed, to not imagine the weight of him, the smell of him. To not wonder what it would be like if this love he had was _enough._

He pulled the pillow tighter to him with both hands and crammed his face in it, swallowing a scream. When he turned his head away, he asked for more.

“Harder,” he said, and she obliged. His spine crackled and popped as the pressure slid bones back into alignment. 

“Harder,” he said again.

She found a knot, pressed her thumb in and pushed. That earned her a groan instead of another demand, and Lupin went quiet after that as she pulled him apart like a clay doll before patting him back together.

After Lupin was certain he could not move without physical assistance, Fujiko kissed his brow and left the bed. He had no desire to stop her. The space was a welcome change. He could sprawl all over that bed, claim it entirely for his own, let every bit of his five-foot-six frame stretch as far as he could, which wasn’t very far at all.

In the bathroom, the shower started. It was easy to let the sound of the spray drag him down into sleep. Soon he was dreaming of a much larger body resting beside him, under his hand.

It would have been a good dream, if the body hadn’t been made of camellias. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank the Lupin fantwitter folks for giving us Feral Pants Off Lupin (Special shout out to @/thegreatermass -- 18+ only twitter!) and all the love out there. I appreciate it!


	6. The Emptiness Of Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love waits.
> 
> But it doesn't wait forever.

When Lupin rolled out of bed it was almost six o’clock in the evening. He marveled at his own exhaustion. He’d fallen into bed at maybe ten in the morning, been massaged till he felt like he was a sack of pudding in the shape of a man, and then slept poorly, dreams filled with dead men shaped by camellias. His weariness went down to his very marrow.

He threw on clothes, one after the other, and then remembered that his blue jacket had been lost, so put on the outfit that went with the red jacket. After five seconds looking at the red, he peeled it off as fast as he could. He couldn’t stand the color right now.

“Jigen, you back?” he called into the main suite.

“Been back for hours,” Jigen replied. He was planted in front of the television, staring at the news with shadowed eyes.

Everyone was shit, he realized. Everyone loved him, and they were all going to suffer.

“You call Goemon and tell him to come back?”

“No,” Jigen said, before he licked his lips. He didn’t look away from the screen. “Probably ought to.”

“Probably,” Lupin said before he sat down on the couch beside him. “I had a dream.”

Jigen grunted once, accepting the information. Then he tilted his head. “Wait, you had a dream? I thought you didn’t dream?”

“Same here,” Lupin said, staring at the screen. The information was processing slowly, like an old computer trying to run calculations after a hard cras. “About Pops.”

Jigen leaned forward, resting his weight on his arms, propping them on his knees. “I mean, that’d be normal if it wasn’t you.”

“I know,” Lupin said. The very idea of dreaming was foreign to him - laying down, shutting his eyes and hallucinating something sounded awful if you asked him. His lack of dreaming had something about his REM state. Scientists and doctors of ill repute had often speculated on the source of Lupin III’s genius, and some of them put the credit into the way his brain functioned. He didn’t honestly care; he was smart, and that was all that mattered. Nobody was going to poke about in his skull anytime soon.

“Guessing bad dreams,” Jigen continued.

“Oh yeah.” Lupin said

“Camellias too?” Jigen asked.

Lupin shivered in his seat and sank a little lower. “Way too many camellias.”

Jigen grunted and nodded. “Sounds like baby’s first nightmare.”

“Don’t call me ‘baby’,” Lupin said with a roll of his eyes. 

“You got what I meant.” Jigen still didn’t look at Lupin even as he gave him that toothless admonishment. 

“Yeah, so. Yeah.” Lupin tried to force himself to relax. Will his limbs into limpness, let the muscles clench and then release. “I. I don’t want to be here anymore. Can we… go somewhere else? Meet Goemon somewhere?”

“I’ll go see if we can get him on the phone.”

“Where’s Fujiko gone?”

“Think she skipped out already. No money to be made here, and even she knows better than to try and play you for a sucker right now,” Jigen said as he got up and got his phone out of his suit coat, where it laid over the armrest of the couch. “She may be a bitch, but she’s not a one hundred percent heartless bitch.”

Was this her way to grieve? To take whatever her real feelings about Zenigata were, and carry them away to do whatever she needed to do. Maybe she’d cry in private or raise a toast to the empty air. Lupin didn’t know. He missed when he used to be able to be there, though. 

The brief uncertainty passed. Whatever she was doing, he would let her do it. She’d come around when she was ready. There was no making Fujiko do a damn thing before she was ready to do it. 

Lupin couldn’t settle, though. He was off the couch a moment later, needing to do something with his hands. Anything that’d keep him from sitting there and circling the same thoughts over and over and over again, till he was dizzy with recriminations and excuses.He went through their things and started to inventory what they’d brought from the old ramen-ya they’d been at.

Everything was accounted for except for his blue jacket, holster and his Walther P-38. 

“Hey, Jigen?” Lupin called from the bedroom. “Where’d the holster and my gun go?”

“What?” Jigen peered around the edge of the doorway. “What did you say?”

“My stuff! Where’s the my stuff?”

“In the closet.”

“No, the stuff-- the jacket. My gun. Did--” 

“Zenigata bled all over your jacket,” Jigen said as he pulled himself up from the couch. “Did you leave something in it?”

“Yeah, I left it over my  _ Walther _ ,” Lupin said, approaching Jigen as the other man scratched at his hair under his hat.

“I didn’t see--” Jigen began, but then he paused. “I didn’t see it, when I spoke to him.”

“What do you mean?” Lupin asked, brows furrowing. 

Jigen’s brows were lifting his hat higher and higher, mouth working slowly. “...that son of a bitch.”

“What?” Lupin almost shouted, voice breaking halfway through the word _.  _ “Where the fuck is my gun, Jigen?”

“That fucking son of a bitch, he got me with one of your tricks!”

“What the fuck do you  _ mean _ he got you?” Lupin’s voice had gone from ‘calm’ to ‘anxious’ and was now rising rapidly into furious. “With one of  _ my _ tricks?”

“One of the most basic tricks and I fell for it,” Jigen dragged both hands down his face. “Fuck!” 

“So what happened?” Lupin reached out to grab his jacket, yanking Jigen back to the now, right in front of him. “Spit it out!”

“I went to get your stuff and he had-- he had the coat in his hands and he’d bled on it,” Jigen said, trying to push Lupin off with one hand as he tried to back up. “He was hanging it back up on the chair when I tried to talk to him. Gave me some hardass bullshit. Pissed me off. Fuck, played me like I was a fuckin’ hysterical woman.”

“So he used your emotions, got you distracted, and stole my gun.”

Jigen wilted just like one of the camellias, going gray in the face. “Yeah.”

“If he kills himself with  _ my gun _ , I am never going to forgive you,” Lupin said, bile creeping up his throat. The very thought of Zenigata done in by Lupin’s own gun -- he was sick enough to puke.

Pushing down his rising gorge, Lupin grabbed his keys and headed for the door. He called back over his shoulder, “You get a hold of Goemon and you get him back here right now! Because if Inspector Zenigata fucking Koichi is found dead by Lupin III’s Walther? We’re finished.”

He didn’t wait for Jigen’s reply. Instead, Lupin stormed out of the hotel, and raced for the stairs rather than waiting on the elevator. 

It’d been hours, he realized. Hours he was sleeping away exhaustion and grief. What was it going to get him? Zenigata dead by his own gun. An emergency exit from the pain. In the momen,t Zenigata probably wouldn't consider the potential consequences of what using Lupin’s own gun to get himself out of pain would mean for everyone else around him.

Or maybe he did. The thoughts turned the acid churning in his stomach to ice. Zenigata could frame him up out of spite. 

A realization washed over him, sweeping the chill away with it. Zenigata wouldn’ frame him up. He wasn’t spiteful. He wouldn’t end himself where someone could pin it on Lupin, with Lupin’s own gun. He loved Lupin far too much for that. Enough that when he held to his duty he grieved on that stupid island that he kept Lupin in for six months… Even then, he had mourned the thief. He wouldn’t damn him to a bleak end as a murderer.

The thought kept Lupingoing, hoping beyond hope, that he could catch him before the inevitable occurred.

When Lupin arrived at the house, it was empty. Everything was locked up -- not that it was a deterrent to Lupin III. As Lupin went room to room, he realized there had been a failed attempt at tidying. In the office, all the boxes had been crammed into a corner, something on top of the pile.

It looked like someone had tried to light some paper on fire, but had failed to set the boxes ablaze. Lupin’s old lighter was laid atop some seared papers. 

“The fuck are you doing, Pops?” Lupin knelt down, picking up the paper. Nothing on them. Just blank sheets. Blood spatter explained why he couldn’t burn them -- he was probably coughing too hard to get anything to light. 

“Okay, you’re going to die, you’re scared, why burn the shit out of everything?” No one was there to answer. Then he remembered: Lupin had been there. He had his prints on everything, fibers and hairs and God knows what else might’ve been left as traces of the thief’s presence. He was protecting Lupin to the very bitter end, and Lupin’s heart simultaneously swelled with the fullness of it and then broke under its own weight.

“I am  _ not _ letting you die like this,” he said as he turned away to continue looking for clues. A search of the garden turned up nothing but a bloody kerchief that was drying out on the path to the garden, right before the door. 

Alright. Pops just wasn’t trying to die peacefully, he wanted to make sure nothing could be pinned to Lupin. If you were a dying old man who wanted to vanish and probably intended to kill yourself so you didn’t linger in pain, what would you do? Lupin didn’t know. He sure as hell had never entertained the idea of taking his own life. The mindset was so foreign it might have well been from Mars.

There was only one person who knew Zenigata as well as Lupin did: his attaché. He hit the speed dial for Yata’s number.

“Hello?”

“Yata! Yata, you have that-- can you do that thing where you locate Zenigata’s phone?” 

“Lu--Why are you calling this number?” Yata’s voice dropped into a hiss. “I thought you were with him!” 

“We-- we left for a little bit, but-- look, that part isn't important,” Lupin kept going over the indignant squawk from the other end of the line. “The part that is important is that he’s missing and in a bad state of mind, Yata.”

Yata’s voice hissed over the line, “I trusted you with him!”

“I-- I know, I know! I fucked up-- God, I fucked up  _ bad. _ ” He couldn’t even begin to get into that, right now. “But help me find him. Do you have his phone on a location share?”

“Of course.”

There was a glimmer of hope, but it was countered by a single drop of doubt. “Does he know how to turn it off?”

“I think so.”

“Fuck!” Of course Zenigata would be a more technically capable person than Goemon. He was older and a bit of a late adopter on some things, but he wasn’t stupid and he didn’t have some weird aversion to modernity. It's taken years just to get Goemon to learn to drive a goddamned car, but Zenigata figured out phone apps on his own just fine. “Just -- look for him anyway. I think he’s called a cab, if he expects to get anywhere in his condition.”

There was mumbling as Yata worked, none of it clear. 

“I’m sending you location data now.”

The address seemed familiar, somehow. Lupin wracked his brain -- something was there, in that area. He knew it. Then he realized: that was one of  _ Lupin's _ places. Abandoned, emptied, never to be used again since the cops knew about it.

Of course,  _ this _ cop would remember it: the late Lupin II’s former armory, briefly used by his son, Lupin III. It had existed as a sort of Lupin museum until everything had decayed so badly over time that nothing was salvageable. 

Just like Zenigata. Broken down beyond repair, doomed to be a piece of Lupin’s history instead of Lupin’s present. Left to rot, unloved and uncared for. 

“You dramatic son of a bitch,” Lupin laughed as he hopped back into the Fiat. “Yata, I know where he is. I’ll call you later.”

“Lupin--” 

Lupin hung up and pocketed his phone, getting the Fiat started and ripping down the road, gripping the steering wheel tight. He’d show him how loved he was. He was going to find that goddamn man, haul him straight to the priest, let them cut out his heart, and then steal it back himself. There was always a way. Lupin just had to find it, before it was too late.

+++

Lupin hadn’t been in this stretch of the Tokyo underground for a very long time. Almost fifteen years, in fact, back when he was still wearing green. He abandoned it during a heist when Zenigata had focused on his hideouts instead of his crimes, and that’d actually proved very clever. Clever enough to make Lupin sweat for a day or two.

It hadn’t been great before that. Relics of his father’s criminal years had been stored there -- biplanes and old cars, weaponry that time had forgotten and long ago sped past. A microcosm of all things Lupin the First had left behind.

Of course Zenigata would come here, sick out of his mind with pain and grief. Of course he’d try to make sure there was no body found to disturb his family with ignoble, weak death by what they’d call disease. Certainly not to kill himself with the Walther and leave the suggestion that Lupin had murdered him. 

No soft death for Zenigata Koichi, no. He did everything the hard way, including dying.

When he found the first kerchief, stained red with blood, he realized it was still soft and damp. Cold, but still recent. Lupin picked his way through the tunnels he’d played in as a boy, wondering if Zenigata knew just how much of his history was around him. The answer was no, he didn’t have to guess. No, he didn’t. Nobody did. Even when he’d had the whole gang down here, he hadn’t told them anything. He had left Lupin II behind him years ago. Lupin III was an entirely different man, a different sort of criminal. The gang wouldn’t have liked Lupin II at all. Neither would Zenigata.

Picking up the trail of kerchiefs, he focused on the now. Now, he was going to find Zenigata --  _ alive _ , he was going to be  _ alive _ \-- and he was going to haul him out bodily before the roots took hold and killed him. He was going to drive him to that goddamn priest himself, and he was going to make sure that son of a bitch lived. If they couldn’t save his heart and his life at the same time, they’d save one and figure out how to steal the other back in due time.

Lupin was wending his way through archives of cooked books and ancient forgery plates when he heard something squelch beneath his feet.

He turned his flashlight on the spot, and watched as camellia petals melted into blood. If they were still fresh enough to melt, that meant Zenigata had to be alive, Alive and moving, no less, if bringing up blood and flowers.

“Pops!” Lupin called out in sudden giddy hopefulness. “Pops!”

A gunshot answered. The retort of the weapon echoed loudly through the empty concrete chambers, bouncing off hard walls in a perfect acoustics hell. But there’d been no crack or debris anywhere near Lupin. No wound. Just the firing.

“Pops! Pops! Please!” Lupin ran now, trying to find the source of the shot past the reverberating echo in cavernous space. His own voice was bouncing, chasing the noise away with his own frantic cries. “ _ Zenigata! _ ”

A cough was Zenigata’s reply, wet and unpleasant. Lupin turned his flashlight on the source. First he saw a hand, limp against the floor, his own Walther in its open palm. 

God must’ve loved his sinning heart, because Zenigata -- blood and petals down the front, ruining an already bad off-the-rack brown suit -- fixed him with a baleful look, gray eyes bloodshot and dull. His head was intact but for a scrape across the brow.

“Wh-- why--” Zenigata struggled to speak as each word brought up camellias. “Lu-- Lupin?” 

Lupin clipped his flashlight to his shirt, and then knelt down, kicking his Walter aside. He cupped the man’s face, looking at him and his injury.

“Couldn’t-- couldn’t shoot-- straight,” Zenigata explained as Lupin pulled him forward into his arms. “Can’t do this.”

“Good!” Lupin blurted, sliding an arm around Zenigata’s broad shoulders, putting his other hand to his chest to steady him. He tried to pull Zenigata upward, but the man was eighty kilos when he was well. He probably had dropped a couple kilos with the curse ravaging his body, but he was still a lot of dead weight to heft. “C’mon, help me help you, Pops.”

“You can’t help. Lupin, please,” Zenigata put a hand over Lupin’s, looking up at him with eyes that should have been stormy gray and were now just the color of dull stone. “Please. Stop.”

“No, we’re gonna--we’re gonna get you to the priest,” Lupin insisted. “If I can’t-- If i can’t break the curse, I’ll find a way to steal your heart back!” 

Zenigata’s only answer was gurgling, wet laughter in the face of Lupin’s wide-eyed horror. 

“Why are you laughing?”

Zenigata patted his shoulder, and then said, “I’m sorry, Lupin, to make you face such a loss this way. But it’s only me, you know. You still have--” he coughed, turned his head, and spat a massive flower from his mouth, “You still have your family. Take care of them, alright? I won’t be able to b--ba-- bail you out anymore.”

“You don’t get it, Pops,” Lupin said before he attempted another heave. “You’re  _ part _ of the family. I wouldn’t put Ami with someone who wasn’t family, Pops.”

“Another failed daughter. I left a letter for her, and one for Toshiko. Make sure they get them, Lupin.” Another wet laugh turned into a cough, Zenigata bucking in his arms once. There was just no moving him. He’d texted Jigen on his way over, but who knew if he’d arrive anywhere near in time to help haul him out and get him to the priest. 

He was going to die, and there was nothing Lupin could do to stop it.

“Lupin,” Zenigata said as Lupin sank down next to him. “Lupin, please. Just stay here, with me. Like I did for you.” 

Lupin shifted, slumping against the wall in defeat. There was no way they’d get him moved in time. It’d take an half an hour just carrying him out of the sewers and to a car. Then there was the drive, and whatever ritual would take. Easily two hours, when Zenigata probably didn’t have one left in him.

“Okay,” Lupin said, holding him to his chest. Zenigata leaned his head back against Lupin’s collarbone. Wrapping his arms around his middle, Lupin held him tight, cheek to Zenigata’s thick hair. “I won’t leave you.”

“I’d ask for a cigarette and a shave but--” Zenigata continued to laugh. It was the ugliest sound. His laugh was like a disposal churning through fresh cut beef, wet and guttural. “Useless, eh?”

“You have no idea how itchy that beard got, Pops,” Lupin said, holding on like Zenigata might melt away into petals at any given moment. His own laughter was ugly, too high and too tight to sound real. In this moment nothing sounded real or genuine except the symphony of sounds that came from a body breaking down in his arms.

“Are you afraid?”

Lupin blinked. He wasn’t the one dying. “Of what?”

“Of the Death of Lupin III?” Zenigata asked, each soaked with pain. “But no, it must be different for you. Lupin III will never die, yeah? There will never be anyone as great as you. But there will be a line of inspectors looking to take my place. You’ll have plenty of opponents. Eventually there’ll be someone good enough to properly challenge you. Maybe even beat you.”

“Part of me is dying right now,” Lupin murmured, tugging him closer. “Stupid old man. We’ll be lesser without you. There is no one else! No one is going to -- to be like you are to us.”

“No you won’t,” Zenigata, full of faith in Lupin even as the thief could feel some part of his soul being carved away. “When people write books, I’ll be just a footnote at the end of some chapter on those who opposed you. Maybe a paragraph or two.”

“Shut up,” Lupin said quietly, trying to quiet Zenigata around a mouthful of words that were all jockeying for the front. “Please, just listen to me.”

Zenigata wheezed once, but gave a small nod.

“Losing you-- won’t cripple me,” Lupin said quietly. He refused to lie to the man, even now. Lupin mustered every ounce of sincerity he could, because Zenigata deserved Lupin’s very best, after always giving his own. “But it will  _ change _ me. You have to know that nothing will be the same. Every time I look back, you will be missing. No one else can take your place, Pops. No one. Every time Interpol sends some greenhorn after me, thinking fresh blood will do the trick? I’ll say ‘they’re not Zenigata, they’ll never be good enough.’”

“Someone will be, someday.” Zengiata said as he held onto hope.

“No,” Lupin insisted, clutching Zenigata that much tighter. He could feel the tears overflowing his lashes. “It wasn’t just -- skill and determination. It was because you loved the work, and you loved me. The love will be missing.”

“If I had realized it for what it was,” Zenigata murmured, voice far too small for a man so large, “I would have walked away from you. Realized I was compromised.”

“I don’t believe that, because you didn’t,” Lupin said, cheek pressed to the crown of Zenigata’s head. “So I’m not leaving you now, Pops. I won’t. I’m here, until the very bitter end. I won’t walk away, and I’m sure as hell not going to leave you down here to be forgotten.”

Zenigata patted his arm, fingers curling around it. They were weak, Lupin realized. Zenigata’s grip should be like handcuffs, hard to escape.

“I wish I’d known all those things that you never said, Pops,” Lupin told him, hoping every word was taken and understood..”I want to know your story, but all I’m going to have left are your writings in the margins of mine. I want so much more! I sure as fuck don’t want your damned replacement, because it doesn’t work that way. Nobody is going to replace Zenigata Koichi in Arsene Lupin III’s heart.”

Zenigata coughed, once harsh, and then again. Lupin gripped him as he gagged up clotted blood, clumps of it suddenly staining Lupin’s jacket and pants. Lupin didn’t let go. The curse was finally choking the life right out of him, but Lupin refused to just let him die untended and uncared for.

The flowers were huge, he realized, but they were melting faster than ever. As soon as they hit the ground or his clothing, they exploded into gray nothingness. Then the first root came out, black and writhing -- it moved on its own and did not dissolve. Lupin watched, open mouthed in horror, as it slithered about in the blood like some sort of blind worm, awkward and slow. 

Zenigata kept coughing, his grip on Lupin suddenly white-knuckle as he continued to heave. More roots were coming up with the clotted blood, until he realized there was one long root pushing itself out through Zenigata’s mouth. It wrapped around Lupin’s arm, but he remained steadfast.

“You can’t make me leave him!” he shouted at it. “I promised him!” 

The thing pulled, but not to get his arm dislodged. Instead it pulled a hideous black mass out of Zengiata’s convulsing body, and dropped wetly into his lap. Lupin bit back a shriek, and grabbed it’s offending root and threw it as hard as he could to the side, wrapping himself in a tight ball around Zenigata until he was sure it wasn’t coming back.

When Zenigata had stopped coughing, Lupin ignored the hideous manifestation of the curse to tend to him instead. He laid Zenigata back, grabbing his hand before feeling for a pulse. It was unsteady, but still there. When Lupin put his ear to his chest, he realized that Zenigata’s breath was coming without struggle.

“Pops? Pops, can you hear me?” Lupin said, cupping his face. “Please, please, talk to me. Please.”

Zenigata’s hand lifted, and his fingers curled around Lupin’s wrist as his eyes opened. In the dim light, they were nearly black. 

“Pops?”

“You’re-- ha-- under arrest.”

Lupin laughed, and then leaned over to kiss the man’s brow, and despite all good sense, his bloody lips.   
“I love you,” he murmured. “I meant it.”

“I know you did,” Zenigata said. 

“So why didn’t -- why are you breathing  _ now  _ and not then,” Lupin said, looking over the man’s body. He was well enough for a man who had something crawl up out of his throat. Still thin and wan and soaked with his own blood, but he sounded worlds better than he had when Lupin arrived.

“Don’t know,” Zengiata told him, tightening his grip. “Not going to question providence. Just-- accept that Lupin III loves Zenigata-keibu, and… rest. God, I’m so tired, Lupin.”

“Rest,” Lupin said, kissing his brow again. “Rest. Jigen’s on his way. We’ll get you back to the house. Take care of you for a few days.”

There was still the wet smack of something on concrete. The thing, that mass of choking bitterness was still out there.

“I have to go check on that -- whatever it was,” Lupin said, smoothing his hand over Zenigata’s hair. “I have to make sure it can’t hurt you again. Stay still for me, okay?”

Zenigata murmured a yes, and then released Lupin’s wrist.

Freed, Lupin scanned the floor. He found his Walther -- fully loaded except for the single bullet that Zenigata had tried to use on himself -- and took it in hand. Then he looked for the mass of roots that had grabbed him.

He followed a thin trail of blood to a corner, where the roots rested. In the center of the mass was a pinched and hideous visage of a woman’s face, eyes stretched narrow and mouth full of bloody teeth. Its tendrils were already starting to wither without a host to feed off, turning gray and crumbling into dust.

“You’re a sad, miserable little thing, aren’t you?” Lupin said as writhed, backing itself into a corner. “Bitter and hateful, because that’s all you had left when love left you high and dry. But… it didn’t for him. That was it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t enough to say ‘I love you.’ Someone had to come back for him. Stay with him, when there was nothing in it to gain. That’s all you wanted, right? For that samurai to return for you.”

The mouth at the center of the roots moved, but no words came forth. Lupin didn’t care. He would have put a bullet in it either way, and took his shot. When it broke apart into gory tendrils and lumps of clotted blood he shot it again, just to be sure.

“Better luck in the next life,” he said.

When he returned to Zenigata’s side, the man was unconscious but still breathing. Lupin sat down beside him, took his hand in his own, and waited for Jigen. He rubbed the tears from his face, and told himself everything was going to be alright. After all, they now had a bunch of new pages for Zenigata’s book, and he was going to make sure they wrote them together. He just had to figure out how to make sure they both had their hands on the pen.

+++

When Haruka got the call three days later, she half-expected it to be news of her ex-husband’s death. She had been trying to organize her thoughts on what she’d tell their daughter and wondering what would happen with this ‘Ami’ child that she'd still never met.

Oscar had been an interesting young man, but troubled. They knew that from the start he’d been homeless and was poorly socialized when the adoption went through. Then the divorce went through. Then Oscar, well, he was through.

The call was about Zenigata, yes. But it was about a recovering Zenigata. A positive update. HarukaShe said she’d be down in a day to check in, gauge for herself how hopeful she should feel. 

Visiting hours were long over but that didn’t stop her from showing up, checking in with the nursing station, chatting up some old colleagues, and then heading down the hall to where Zenigata was resting. He was probably being served dinner right now.

The door was cracked open, but the warm laughter -- too familiar to be professional, too affectionate to be casual -- that she heard through it brought her up short. She stepped aside, and then waited in the hall.

A nurse came out -- male, in blue scrubs, with eyes that were bright and shining with happiness. That was not the look of a nurse who was being kind with a good natured patient. That was a man who was fully smitten and glowing with it.

That was Lupin III.

Haruka knew his average height (five foot six, taller than she was but significantly shorter than Zenigata) and his general weight class. She’d seen thousands of pictures of him, what with Zenigata’s office being a sort of museum to the history of Lupin while he worked his case in the early years, but it was the voice she recognized. She’d listened to recordings of Lupin'shis voice -- television and streaming broadcasts were easy to find. It unlocked the mystery of ‘who is that man that sounds so friendly with my ex-husband’ but did not give her the reason why he sounded so happy.

Haruka followed after him, slowly increasing speed, one step after another. His pace stayed constant. Eventually, she was close enough to reach out and grab his arm.

“Ararara?” It rolled out of his mouth in a way that could have been called cute if she wasn’t furious that this man was here at all, here acting like he cared about Zenigata, like he hadn’t been a goddamned homewrecker. 

Recognition went over his features like a wave. Starting with his eyebrows rolling up toward his hairline, eyes widening, and his monkey-lipped mouth slowly shaping a little ‘o’ of surprise. 

“Ah, what can I do for you, Zenigata-sensei?” he asked. His voice was level, but his eyes were wary, pupils went to pinpricks as he focused on her. She knew a threat assessment when she saw one.

Haruka pulled on his arm, and was satisfied when he stumbled. A second yank, and he stood firm. “You’re coming with me.”

“I know what this looks like--” he said, putting both hands up before him, even though she still held his arm. “But I swear I’m not doing anything bad! I just wanted to make sure he was recovering, I promise. We... We don’t hate him, you know?”

“Oh, I could hear how much you ‘hate’ him, sharing a laugh like old friends do,” Haruka hissed. “Did he know it was you? I recognized your voice, so he must have!”

Lupin’s demeanor was like water. The wave that lapped up over his face now was eroding his good nature, and revealing a more serious mein. His monkey-lipped mouth tightened up a bit before he said, “Why don’t we have a talk, yeah?”

“I could just scream for security,” Haruka said as she gripped his arm more tightly. 

“You know I’ll get away,” Lupin said.

It was true, Haruka realized. She could scream bloody murder and all it would do is make Lupin run. He would not be caught, he would skip town laughing, and she’d never have a chance like this again. 

“Then keep walking. The east wing-- the hospital ran out of money for the renovations after-- after a scandal,” Haruka said, tugging on him to get him moving. “It’s still in disrepair. We can talk there.”

“You’re mighty fearless for a teeny little lady,” Lupin said, grin returning as she hauled him away. “I like it. No wonder he fell for you!”

“Shut up!” She ducked past the tie-offs blocking the hall and then past the still-creaky double doors. There was a short hallway beyond it that led to an unused nurses lounge that was now basically a storage facility.

One inside, Lupin pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. 

“Don’t do that,” Haruka said. “Don’t act like you’re casually hanging out with me. That’s not what this is!” 

The pack vanished back into his pocket. Lupin found himself a seat on the forgotten old couch, and said, “Say what you need to.”

“Say what I need to? You think this is about me-- getting something off my chest?” Haruka asked, growing more incredulous by the second. She swept her arm out as if she might somehow encompass everything around her -- her ex-husband, the hospital where she used to work, her whole life. “You think you can walk in here and act like you’re guiltless?”

“Oh no!” Lupin shook his head, spreading his hands in surrender as his smile returned. “I’m a dirtbag! Like that kid in Peanuts. Absolutely filthy! I know it, you know it, Pops knows it. I’m the worst.”

Haruka had no idea what he was talking about, but the gist got across. Lupin didn’t care what he did, he knew what he was. He was never going to be ashamed of himself. He was Lupin III, and he was wonderful.

Unrepentant, Lupin smiled at her, all broad teeth. 

“You piece of shit,” she shouted, satisfied when he leaned back, his smile swept off his face. “Do you know what you’ve done? To -- to him, to his family?”

“I know everything I’ve done to Pops, and everything he’s done to me back,” Lupin said, before he lifted one hand. “You? I’ve never done anything to you.  _ He _ did plenty. I didn’t make him chase me. I didn’t tell him it was his destiny. I didn’t ask him to ignore you and forget his other responsibilities. He did all of those things from the bottom of his own little heart.”

“You say this like you didn’t encourage it,” Haruka snapped. “Like you didn’t enjoy it.”

“With all due respect,” Lupin said, leaning forward with his hands on the edge of the couch, “when your husband was younger, he was a piece of shit like the rest of us.”

“Shut your damned mouth!” Haruka growled. 

“No!” Lupin snapped back, “I won’t. You see, I have an old tie tucked away somewhere. That old Colt of his put a real good sized hole in it, and he would have put a real good sized hole in me if I hadn’t been quick. He caught the shot just right, but only the tie was still there when the bullet hit. I didn’t enjoy that too much.”

“That’s his job. He catches bad men. If he can’t catch them, sometimes he has to stop them. That’s how policing works, you ass! You put yourself there, in front of his gun by your own actions!” Haruka retorted. She was red in the face, so hot and so angry that Lupin was beginning to blur. “Don’t make it sound like he had some personal vendetta!”

Lupin looked at her for a moment, before he said, “But he did. He was ambitious, career driven, and passionate. Had a lot of weight on his shoulders, coming from generation after generation of cops. I mean, his great-whatever-grandpa? He’s a kami worshiped at Myojin! I mean, my grandfather, he left me a legacy, but nothing that big, nothing that heavy. But to the heir to Zenigata Heiji? Taking down Lupin III would secure his sense of being a worthy successor. Erase all those feelings of unworthiness, all those questions about who he is, what his purpose is. What man wouldn’t grab onto something so clear?”

Haruka watched Lupin lean back in his seat, folding his arms behind his head. It was hard to tell if his flippancy was real, or if he was just covering whatever it was he really felt. He was a cipher she didn’t have the key for.

Zenigata had it, though. She was sure of it.

“Koichi was a good man,” she said.

“He still is. Might even be a better one, now, then when he started.” When Haruka took a step forward, Lupin raised his hands to correct himself. “Not because of me! Time changes all of us, that’s all.”

“Who’s Ami to you, then?”

Haruka was certain she heard a vertebrae crack when his head snapped up. But then he shrugged. “Stolen goods.”

“You asked him to look after her,” she said.

“Yeah,” Lupin didn’t bother to lie. “He did it, too, when everybody thought I was dead.”

“So you just abandoned her in his care?” 

Lupin’s mouth curled up in something wicked, teeth again showing beyond his pulled lips. Monkeys smiled as a sign of aggression, she thought, promising violence with their sharp little teeth. Lupin might be the same.

“Sure did!” he chortled in malicious glee, shoulders shaking. “And he was sucker enough to pick her up, too.”

That was a lie, Haruka realized it. Lupin over-played it, putting too much mustachioed villain into his voice, into his body language. The laugh was a dead giveaway. He was aiming to be hated. 

“Why are you lying?” she asked. 

The wave crashed over Lupin again, wash away the more aggressive persona like a shoddily built sand castle, leaving him openly curious. “You were a good match for him. Bet your kid is smart as hell.”

“Toshiko’s amazing,” Haruka said, pride making her bear her own teeth. “Not that Koichi would know.”

The waters of Lupin were darker now, starting to churn. “Oh, he knows. You think he doesn’t know what this cost him, but he does. I’d say he has his regrets, like anybody else would. But I’m telling you: I didn’t hold a gun to his head and tell him he had to chase after me. Nobody did. This was his choice to make, and his alone.”

There was nothing that Haruka could say that would make that a lie. She knew it, even as her vision swam. He knew it, looking at her. But he didn’t pity her, and that was the only thing keeping her from lunging for his face and ripping it to pieces until the only thing left of Lupin’s smile was blood caked under her nails.

“So what are you here for?” Haruka got the words out carefully, voice threatening to break and go weak.

“I told you,” Lupin said as he sat back, looking aside. “I’m here to check on him. He was in a bad way. But he’s going to live now.”

“Why wouldn’t you celebrate his death?” Haruka asked. If there was no hate here, that meant some other thing drove Lupin into her husband’s hospital room. “Is he colluding with you?”

Lupin waggled one hand in the air, refusing to give a solid yes or no. “Wouldn’t call it that, necessarily.”

“God! How long? How--” Haruka sucked in a breath. It was there, now, before her. She could see it, now that he’d ripped every other possibility away. “How long have you been who he loves?”

There was nothing for a time. The bustle of the hospital was far away, leaving only the still air in the unused wing. Nobody said anything; Lupin couldn’t meet her eyes, but Haruka couldn’t look away. Frozen, they stood, waiting for something to break the moment, but the only ones who held the hammer were the two of them.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I don’t think he knows when things changed, either.”

Haruka sagged in relief. She sat down on the other end of the battered couch in silence.

“Thank you for not lying,” she said, voice suddenly raw and haggard. It came out like she’d run a marathon, dry and dehydrated. 

“Not about this,” Lupin said. “No, if there’s anything you are owed-- it’s that truth.”

“Do you love him?” Haruka asked.

Lupin leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “I love a lot of people, Zenigata-sensei. I have loved dangerous women and dirty men, I have loved supermodels and business tycoons. That doesn’t even cover the wild flings or passionate affairs…”

“Why are you avoiding the answer?”

“Because it’s ‘yes’, and I don’t know what to do with that,” Lupin said. “I don’t know what that means yet, and I don’t know what it’ll matter to you if I do or not.”

“Would it change things, if you did?”

“It already has,” Lupin replied. 

Haruka looked at her hands. She had saved lives with them, raised a child with them, held her husband with them. Lupin’s hands were big and hairy, not unlike Zenigata’s hands. He had stolen with them, killed with them, seduced with them. What she did not understand is why Zenigata could place himself in those hands after having been in hers.

“Look,” Lupin said after the quiet passed. “I don’t have any way to tell you what you want to hear. I can’t steal you back the time you lost. I can’t pull your daughter’s happy childhood out of my pocket and hand it to you with a ‘whoops, how did that get there.’ All I can do is say is -- he’s mine now, and I’ll take care of him. It’s all I  _ can _ do.”

“I don’t care what you do,” Haruka said.

“Hey, it’s not nice to lie when I’ve been honest with you,” Lupin said, giving her a look. “You care. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. You wouldn’t have come when he first got hurt, if you didn’t.”

“He’s the father of my child.” The words were like marbles in her mouth, rolling and clicking against her teeth. Too full, too slippery.

“That doesn’t mean shit,” Lupin said, standing up and leaning back. His spine crackled with his stretch. “You can take that one to the bank, Zenigata-senisei. I know plenty of parents who don’t give a fuck about their exes who gave them children. You love him. He loves you. I mean, it’s  _ obvious _ , but…”

“It’s not like it was,” Haruka said. She didn’t want to hear those words out of his mouth. 

“No. Not for either of us,” Lupin said. 

“What are you going to do with his love?”

“I told you, I don’t know. But he’s got recovery time ahead of him and I have places to be. It’ll give us both plenty of distance and time to think,” Lupin said. His hand dipped into his pocket again, fishing out a battered pack of Shinseis. Her ex-husband’s favorites. “I don’t usually keep my treasures once I steal them.”

“Is he a treasure?” Haruka asked.

“You don’t need me to tell you that,” Lupin said as he tapped a cigarette free of the pack. “I’m going to have my smoke now.”

“Outside,” she said.

“Outside,” he replied with a nod.

Haruka said nothing when he walked out. She leaned back, and once a count of ten passed, let the pain break through her. The grief washed over her face till she could taste tears on her lips, feel them tickle as they slid across the planes of her face. 

When she had been wrung dry of tears, she had no idea how much time had passed. She slipped out of the deserted wing, and then she left the building entirely. 

Haruka did not look back, not until she was on the train to Hokkaido. Only then, when she stared out at the night as it raced by, did she toss a glance back to Tokyo. Then she pulled out her phone, browsed to her daughter’s number, and hit ‘CALL.’ 


	7. The Heat of Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With summer comes a return to business as usual, though some things are more usual than others. Hopeful, Zenigata knows change is difficult, and that there will be growing pains as he takes his first steps toward resuming his life in Lyon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to skip the smut you can search and reach "You going to tell me those stories, Pops?" after the first part of the chapter, and you'll skip all the smut and get to the important storybits post-smut! Happy reading!

It had taken three glasses of Hikibi 17 year, Yata’s presence and a minor meltdown to make the call. Another meltdown when he had the ‘yes.’ Yata was still needed for the choice exhaustion that occured in trying to dress himself and prepare for the actual meeting. Anxiety had swallowed up his ability to decide what to wear, what to bring if anything. Yata, ever faithful, did his best to advise.

He was sent to a public place -- playground in a small park. Zenigata has finally chosen something straddling the line between dressy and casual, nice slacks with a button down, but no tie. He went to the appointed park, sat down on the bench he’d been told to go to, and waited.

It had been a long time since he came to a place like this. When he had been not much older than his daughter was now, trips to the park were rare for a beat cop with a toddler. Long days and exhausted nights meant she was well taken care of and they didn’t hurt for money -- even if he had to admit his wife was the earner in the family. Zenigata still had to do a good job, and build a name for himself.

Now, sitting here in the shade of a tree waiting to see his daughter for the first time in over fifteen years, he realized he hadn’t needed to do any of that. He could have just been a good cop, and held to his moral center. He didn’t need to reach for exceptional cop, best cop, famous cop. Good cop should have been enough, especially when coupled to being a good father, a good husband.

None of these thoughts were helpful. He knew that Toshiko would bring her own thoughts on the matter, and those were the thoughts that were important to hear. Not Zenigata’s own personal recriminations against himself. Those were ultimately useless, and sitting here beating himself up under a tree in a park was doubly so. He had to wait for Toshiko, and he had to be ready to address anything that she might say or do. He owed her that, and far beyond it.

Trying not to wring his hands, he only just noticed a woman approaching him, pushing along a stroller. Inside was a well bundled infant -- just past the wrinkled alien child phase and starting to smooth and plump into baby fat and soulful eyes. 

After a moment, he realized who it was. The resemblence was undeniable: Toshiko looked like him. What a curse for her, having the giveaway signs of the Zenigata genes. Those long eyelashes were the Zenigata family stamp, with the sharp cheekbones beneath. The roundness of her mother’s face softened her sharp edges, though, and so she wasn’t cursed to be the spitting image of her homely father. Small blessings there, he was hardly anybody's idea of a looker.

Zenigata stood up abruptly, hat taken from his head and held to his chest. When she got closer he looked into that face that was half a reflection of his, and sent up thanks that there was more of her mother than him in her. Her mother’s golden-brown eyes had become almost the color of honey in Toshiko’s face, her mouth a rosebud as opposed to the serious, wide set of Zenigata's mouth.

“Don’t stare,” Toshiko admonished gently. “People will get the wrong idea.”

“I’m sorry,” Zenigata said, turning his gaze down to the baby, who was still mostly asleep. “I just-- it’s been a long time since I saw your face. Really saw it, in person.”

Toshiko’s mouth was pressed tightly shut. There was probably a retort there, just waiting to be flung like a dart. He would be defenseless against her, the most tender parts of him hers to wound as she saw fit. But she stayed her hand for the moment.

“Mother said you were sick,” she said.

“I-- I was,” Zenigata stuttered through the reply. “I recovered.”

Toshiko sat down on the bench, and folded her hands over her lap, looking at the child in the stroller. There was a pause before she carefully said, “But you didn’t call while you were sick.”

“No. I didn’t. Not until I knew I was going to survive,” Zenigata said. He had his reasons, but he doubted any of them would mean anything to her. 

“Mother said you had a new girl,” Toshiko said, still keeping each word measured for a specific weight, a carefully crafted tone. “Another ‘Oscar.’”

“No. Ami’s -- Ami is a ward of the state. I’ve become her guardian. It isn’t quite… it isn’t like Oscar,” he said. Relief flowed over him even as shame soured his stomach when he said, “She’s not like Oscar.” 

Toshiko stared dead ahead, as if she were watching a different family drama play out, somewhere on the playground. “Did you call her?”

“I did not,” Zenigata said.

“Why?”

“Because… Because I felt I would be just another person who has left her alone,” Zenigata told her, using every ounce of strength he had to keep his hands on his thighs and not wring them. His fists were white-knuckled from the pressure. “She -- she is like Oscar, in that she was a victim of a crime. She is not like Oscar. He fell in the line of duty. She is still young, with a world still open before her.”

It felt like slander, saying that about what had happened to Oscar. But the case was classified, and Oscar’s death was kept from everyone. Oscar’s slim chance at survival was only proven by the presence of a badge and a single franc that had been saved from the ashes of Fraulein Eule’s last bastion of strength, If if he lived, he had no desire to see Zenigata ever again, that much was clear. Zenigata still had the hat with the hole in its brim where Oscar had put a bullet through it.

“You don’t think your death would affect her?”

“Of course it would. But she has others to support her,” Zenigata said. “She wouldn’t be alone. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.”

“What do you think now?” Toshiko asked. Only now did she finally look at him, even if it was just from the corner of her eyes.

“I think it was a selfish attempt to spare myself the pain of it,” Zenigata admitted. It wasn’t for her that he said it. He owed her honesty, yes, but this was as much to keep himself on a leash. He had done wrong. Now, he was blessed with a second chance to do right. He could not ignore that. “I was dying, and I wasn’t strong enough to shoulder up my responsibilities. If-- if I hadn’t recovered, I would have died a coward.”

“And me?” Toshiko’s poker face was immaculate. She might’ve been wearing a mask for all she showed on her face. Zenigata wasn’t sure if this was the face she presented to everyone, or if she was this cold only for him.

“I was terrified to face you,” Zenigata said, folding his hands in his lap. The urge to wring them reflected the feeling clenching in his chest, squeezing a drop of heart’s blood for each word. “Haruka-- your mother told me, she’d seen your child. Told me to call you, to take this one chance. We both thought I was going to die, and I just kept thinking -- why would my daughter even want me to? I don’t even get the right to call her by name. I missed everything. Her graduation, her wedding, her first gallery showing and every one after that. I didn’t even know she had a child of her own now.”

There was a quiet moment. 

“I didn’t realize you knew I was showing,” Toshiko said.

“Oh, I knew,” Zenigata said, glancing to the side and then away. “I have three of your paintings in storage here at home, waiting for me to hang them as I make the house livable again. I have one in my home office in Lyon, and another in my Lyon apartment. It was...” Zenigata coughed once, trying to get the gruffness out of his throat. “It was the only way I could support you without tipping my hand. To give you something, without making you endure my presence in your life.”

“Or making you face your past mistakes,” Toshiko said, cutting his excuses off at the knees with a tongue like a jagged blade. There were no razor clean cuts; everything hurt.

“Or facing my mistakes, yes. But... when I survived, I thought that maybe it was beyond time to do that,” Zenigata said, straightening up. It took every ounce of will he had to look at her, but he had to see her. “I know I have done your grievous wrong, Toshiko. Nothing will get me back the time I wasted. I made the wrong choices, and while I cannot hate myself for all of them, I am ashamed, for having made you pay the price for them. I am sorry.”

Toshiko watched him in silence, but he would not look away. She would judge him and turn aside, or judge him and forgive him. There was no middle ground here - either he would be forgiven on whatever terms she gave him, or his apology would be meaningless to her, and denied. He refused to look away from her, turn his face from his shame, and quail before her. 

“I don’t know that I can forgive you,” Toshiko began.

“I know,” Zenigata said.

“I’m not finished,” Toshiko snapped, biting off the last word savagely before she resumed her chill demeanor, heat dissipating under the shade of the tree. “Let me finish.”

Zenigata gave her a mute nod, lips sealed.

“Mother called me, and told me everything. That you’d been sick, that you’d recovered. Mentioned you were doing well, now, and if you got up the courage to call after all that, I should give you a chance.” Toshiko’s tongue wetted her lips, as she paused for breath. “She also said if you did not call, I should write you off forever. That you were never, ever going to think of me again, and I shouldn’t waste my time ever thinking of you.”

Zenigata swallowed down something that felt gummy in his throat, a feeling he wasn’t sure he could name. It was as foreign as the roots that had choked him, but this could be pushed down far more easily. Haruka’s actions left a lot to be considered, but he would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

“You called,” Toshiko finished. “So I came.”

“Thank you,” Zenigata said, mouth sticky as he felt it dry out with each word. “I don’t know that you will do anything past this moment but hear my words, but if that is what I am allowed, I take it gratefully.”

“Do you regret anything?” Toshiko asked him, and the first fine crack in her facade appeared, mouth tightening against any further words.

“So much, Toshiko, so much,” Zenigata said. He did not regret the days spent on the chase after Lupin. He did regret the days he wasn’t in the field that he sacrificed to research and training, days that could have been spent elsewhere. Even if he’d still spent half his free time training, the other half was still more time he could have given his family. “I know I should have been a better husband and father. A better man.”

Toshiko said nothing for a moment, and Zenigata was certain he was going to stain his shirt with sweat. He could feel the dampness starting to creep up at the back of his neck, along his hairline.

Toshiko reached for the stroller, and Zenigata went still as death, certain she was going to leave him now, after this one meeting where he would go back to knowing almost nothing about her life, her happiness, her family. 

She undid the straps and brought up the bundle of child, shifting him carefully. “Put up your arms,” Toshiko told Zenigata, and he was quick to obey. 

When she settled the baby into his arms, Zenigata felt a huge weight fly away, as if the baby had somehow upended gravity. He looked down into the child’s face. 

“Zenigata eyelashes,” he said, voice going hoarse. 

“Everybody’s going to have them. The world has to know we’re all the descendents of Zenigata Heiji,” Toshiko said, and her voice had gone paper dry, fighting her own emotions too. “That’s Kamakawi Hiroshi. He is your grandson.”

“I see, I see. Hello, Hiroshi!” Zenigata’s eyes were damp, but that lasted only a few seconds. The wetness spilled over far too fast to be seemly, fat tears trickling over his cheeks. The baby peered up into his face, comfortable and warm. Zenigata had forgotten what it felt like to be so simple and content as a child could be. “Good to meet you, young man.”

“If you ever want to hold him again,” Toshiko said, sandpaper voice scraping his good cheer at the edges, “you will be home within the next six months. You will reach out on birthdays and holidays. We will see you more than once a year. Do you understand?”

Zenigata nodded rapidly, his throat suddenly tight again -- but it wasn't bad, he wasn’t suffocating. He just had so much love filling his chest that it was overflowing, leaking out in tears and soft little noises he tried to restrain.

“On your next trip, you’ll meet my husband,” Toshiko said, folding her hands in her lap. The cold ice was crackling away, revealing a face turning red with emotion, trying to keep from crying herself. “He will be harder to impress than the baby. Do you understand?”

“I do, I do!” Zenigata blurted, and that earned a whiny sound from young Hiroshi in his arms. “Ah, ah, it’s okay, it’s okay. Shh-shh.”

They sat there for a moment like this, with Zenigata looking into the eyes of his grandson as they slowly opened and closed again. He was so small; it had been so long ago that Toshiko had been this big.

“Keep an eye out for Kawasaki’s Disease,” Zenigata said quietly, suddenly nervous. Babies were so small and delicate. “You had it by the time you were three, and I had it when I was five. It can be very dangerous, and we’re predisposed to it.”

“I remember,” Toshiko said, looking out over the playground. “When I got sick, everything was hot and crackling. You made obaa-san’s special soup, you said.”

“I did,” Zenigata said, swallowing again. He shifted his arms to carefully nestle the baby in the crook of his large arms, and offered his hand to the baby’s tiny, grasping fingers. “The same she made for me to keep my strength up when I was sick with it. You were younger than me, though- I was so afraid. Your mother was so busy with work, and I could finagle a couple of days off when I was just a beat cop. The boys mocked me terribly for it, but I didn’t care. When you were well, that was all that mattered.”

“I’m glad I was first in your thoughts at some point,” Toshiko said, flaying him open to the bone.

“You’ve always been in my thoughts. I just-- forgot what my priorities should be,” Zenigata said. He finally looked up at her, tear-wet face, overflowing eyes and all. “I’m sorry. I really am, for all the good it does.”

“If regret brings you home more than once a year, I’ll believe you’re truly sorry,” Toshiko said, smoothing her hands over her pantlegs. “For now, you get to hold your grandson, and tell me which paintings you bought, so I know where they ended up.”

Zenigata smiled, finally recognizing her face with the ice masking her expression gone. Her Zenigata eyelashes were thick with Zenigata tears. 

“Gladly,” he said, and told her as much as he could.

+++

_Not going to make it in time. Sent car for you._

Zenigata looked up from his phone as he and his sole carry-on suitcase made their way down the ramps past customs. There was no extra baggage to grab, as he was traveling lighter than usual. His apartment in Lyon beckoned. 

Yata had flown in headahead of him to make sure things were all back in their place. Missing him at the airport wasn’t surprising -- there’d been Lupin sightings in Paris. Zenigata had no idea where the thief had gone since their last night together, but he was sure he’d find out soon enough.

There was a dark-haired, boyish looking Frenchman waiting for him with a sign spelt ZINIGATAH. Not the worst misspelling he’d seen, but it was still up there. He tipped his hat to the man. “I’m Inspector Zenigata.”

“Of course! Let me--” he took Zenigata’s bag off his hands and put it into the trunk, and then opened the door for Zenigata. 

Once Zenigata was comfortably inside, he gave him an address and sat back. The car was nice. Roomy back seat, definitely executive level stuff. It was not a car sent by Interpol at all, that was for damn certain. Too roomy for Interpol, and definitely too pricey with it being an Audi.

“You couldn’t even wait until I got home,” he said, and he watched the monkey grin spread across the driver’s face from the rearview mirror.

“Man, I thought I’d get you for at least a few more minutes,” Lupin said, angling the rearview so he could make sure Zenigata saw him wink. “What was the tip off? My roguish charm?”

“The overpriced car,” Zenigata chuckled, looking at the posh leather interior of the car, sleek and smooth. “Like Interpol would bother to send me something this nice.”

“What can I say, I thought you deserved to be picked up in something nicer than a 1977 Passat,” Lupin replied, grin never slipping.

“So am I being kidnapped?”

“Wouldn’t say that, now,” Lupin replied as he drove through the streets of Lyon. “I am taking you home. With maybe a detour.”

“Detour, you say?”

“Not much of one.” 

“Are you sure?”

Lupin’s grin got wider. “If you don’t stop asking questions, I might not let you get home.”

“You know you’ll be in deep trouble if you try and detain an Interpol agent,” Zenigata said. The soft barbs, the back and forth-- it was nice. He still didn’t know where they were going with-- whatever it was that they had, right now. Things had been said, they’d held on to each other for the scant time they had, but Zenigata recovered and life was beckoning.

Life with Lupin in it, though, would be a constant. The thief wasn’t quitting, and neither was Zenigata. The thing in question was how they would exist after everything that had happened back in the spring when the only blooming flowers he’d cared about had been growing in his lungs. 

“See, I thought about just lounging about in your apartment in a bed of roses, but then I thought maybe you were tired of flowers,” Lupin started, waving one hand as he spoke. “Can’t really blame you, either.”

“Yes,” Zenigata laughed, and it sounded more tired than he really felt. “Thank you for skipping that bit.”

“So instead, I figured I’d come and steal you for a little bit, before I took you home and we let the evening proceed from there,” Lupin said as he continued to drive.

“Ah, so you’re going to steal my day from me?” Zenigata couldn’t be cross about it. It was almost funny. Of course Lupin would do something so impulsive. It was his nature -- for all the planning that went into his crimes, a lot of Lupin’s success depended on him adapting on the fly, doing things by the seat of his pants.

The sudden lurch of the car was because Lupin was entering a parking garage, accessed by a scan card. The sharp turn rattled Zenigata in the back seat. He was leaning forward to ask when Lupin wheeled them to a corner of the underground structure and threw the sedan into park.

“Don’t get out,” Lupin said as he undid his seatbelt.

“What’s this about, then?”

Tossing his driver’s cap to the front passenger seat, Lupin canted his head to wink once, before he was suddenly slithering through the space between the front and the back, pouring himself into the back seat and straight into Zenigata’s lap. 

“The hell, Lupin!” Zenigata said it with a laugh, and then he was face to face with a man who could fold himself up and unfold himself in entirely new configurations with the slightest of ease. Lupin had righted himself over Zenigata’s lap, shamelessly straddling him and throwing his arms around the taller man’s neck.

“Look, you can’t expect me to see you looking like that and somehow _contain_ myself,” Lupin said as he slid his fingers into Zenigata’s hair, catching his hat in the other and setting it aside behind the seat. 

Zenigata’s mouth had opened for protests but went silent with kisses; Lupin was as aggressive as Zenigata expected him to be -- sliding his tongue into Zenigata’s mouth with the same ease he did with a pick in a lock, both meant to be the undoing of the other. Zenigata felt all the tumblers in his body suddenly coming loose, groaning into Lupin’s mouth as he finally let his hands reach and grab on to what he wanted.

“Horny son of a bitch,” he murmured once Lupin tilted his head back, baring his throat and submitting to Zenigata’s hungry, biting mouth. “Do you ever stop?”

“No,” Lupin sighed. He let himself arch back, supported solely by the strength of Zenigata’s one hand beneath his shoulder blades. “Not ever.”

The admission did things to him, Zenigata realized. Made all the things trapped behind the lock on his heart spill out, hot and wanting as he pressed his face into Lupin’s throat, breathing hard. Each gulp of air was a promise, taken because this idiot had learned to love him back.

Lupin’s fingers carded through Zenigata’s hair. He urged Zenigata onward with hips and tongue, wriggling over Zenigata’s lap and letting his name tumble out of a mouth that was half-lewd, half-laughing. 

Zenigata grabbed a handful of ass and brought Lupin tighter to him, delighting in the younger man’s gasp. One of Lupin’s hands dropped to grab the back of his suit coat, and rutted over his lap as they kissed with overeager sloppiness. 

“You’re like a horny teenager,” Zenigata said with gratitude.

“I don’t fuck like a teenager, though,” Lupin promised. He swayed back, still using Zenigata’s hands as a brace, and wriggled to create enough space to get his own hands between them, undoing Zenigata’s shirt and fly before he started to work on his own. 

“Here? Really?”

“I’m not waiting until we get home,” Lupin told him in no uncertain terms, tossing his own jacket over into the front seat. “Not when I know you got cleared for field duty and ‘strenuous activities’ a few days ago.”

Zenigata felt so hot, he knew he must be blushing. Maybe it was just Lupin’s weight over his hips; every delicious ounce of pressure was sending blood south, each heartbeat starting to be a pulse he felt down to his cock. “But in the car?”

“Why do you think we’re in an Audi with a roomy back seat?” Lupin asked, eyes bright with a devil’s delight. His nails scraped over the back of Zenigat’s neck, raising gooseflesh in their wake. “Besides, I hear this isn’t the first time you’ve fucked in a stolen car.”

Zenigata’s outrage was lost in the rush of blood in his ears. He must be the color of beets by now. “Thief! Spy!” 

“I think ‘Knave’ is more appropriate here,” Lupin said, lips curling up in a wicked grin.

“You think because you dug through photo albums and case files you know who I am?” Zenigata said, shifting to surge forward, catching Lupin between the front seat and his own bulk. With his hot face pressed to Lupin’s neck, he grabbed the thief’s slender hips, bucking up against him. If he was going to be hard, he was going to make sure Lupin knew it. “You think you know me?”

“I thought I knew,” Lupin said past bruised lips and a wide smile. “But now I get to learn. We live our lives in the margins, remember? Things nobody will ever know but us. That nobody _gets_ to know, but you and me.”

Suddenly his breath was gone again, but it wasn’t burning, it wasn’t held. It was stolen as surely as if Lupin had swiped it with his own two hands. Lupin grabbed for his advantage and dragged him into kissing again. 

“C’mon, pencil some things in with me,” Lupin purred in his ear before he caught its lobe with his teeth and tugged. “I know you want to get the lead out.”

“Stop mixing your metaphors,” Zenigata said, trying to keep his voice from ratcheting up while Lupin sucked on his earlobe. It wasn’t a ‘no’, though. He was well beyond saying no, not when every action screamed ‘yes.’

The struggle became frantic; clothing was coming off -- mostly Lupin’s, some of Zenigata’s. Lupin was a practiced speed stripper, Whether it was because he didn’t want to waste time in getting to the good bits or because he routinely changed costumes on the fly during heists was a mystery, but Zenigata figured it could be a little bit of both. Lupin was already rolling his button down shirt off his shoulders, but it caught in the crooks of his arms as he worked at Zenigata’s buttons. He hiked up Zenigata’s undershirt, sliding his hands over the hard plan of his abs, over the softness that settled over his hips.

“I ever told you that you’re absolutely perfect?” he purred again. “Hard and soft, just the right amount of both!”

“Glad you approve,” Zenigata said as he watched Lupin smooth his hands along his sides. 

With Zenigata’s shirt left hanging open and his undershirt hiked up by Lupin’s wandering hands, Lupin moved to get his pants open and tugged down till they were just at his knees, wriggling together to get them there. Bare ass now on leather seats, Zenigata felt nothing but relief. 

Lupin’s own erection was straining his trousers, so he started on his own clothing. He got to where he could fold himself nearly in half to pull his pants off, and then right himself, not bothering with his shirt, leaving the tails of it to cover his thighs. 

“Oh, man, almost forgot,” Lupin said as he leaned over and brought up a bag from the floor, black and discreet, that had been tucked under the front passenger seat. 

“Forgot my ass! You planned this from the get-go,” Zenigata said as Lupin produced a box of condoms from it. He didn’t know how he was going to maintain an erection at this rate; every new trick made his blush feel that much hotter, made the ache run that much deeper.

“I know what I’m after,” Lupin replied with a grin that was all teeth. “Now get this plug out and _fuck me_ , old man.”

Zenigata was brought up short with one word. “Plug?” 

Lupin went up on his knees, straddling Zenigata’s lap again. He guided Zenigata’s hand to exactly what he meant, taking his time. He rutted briefly against Zenigata’s broad palm, pushed it down past his sac and then to the flared base of a plug sitting between his cheeks.

It was a testament to just how badly he wanted to fuck in the car. He’d come to get Zenigata lubed, stretched and ready. The weight and pressure of the plug must’ve been a hell of a distraction, waiting to meet with Zenigata at the airport, let alone drive all this time. 

“Look, you don’t have a lot of time to stretch me out, and I’ve seen you naked,” Lupin said, as he curled his fingers around Zenigata’s, urging him to grip and wiggle it. “Seen your big ff--fucking dick-- c’mon, c’mon, the faster it’s out the faster you’re in.” 

Zenigata’s bellowing laughter echoing in the car deafened them both for a moment, but he was pressing kisses under Lupin’s ear and doing what he was told a moment later. “How can you stand to be this horny all the time?”

Lupin’s sigh was wistful, and a touch sad. “It’s-- not what anybody asks for, you know, but you live the way God made you, yeah? And God made me want _everything._ ”

Zenigata’s teeth worried his throat, leaving little bites from just below his ear down to the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Each bite proceeded a wriggle and tug, and then another, until Lupin was baying like a bitch in heat and Zenigata felt the heavy weight of the plug slide free. Lupin’s hands grabbed his hair and sent shockwaves of pleasure down his spine.

“Put it in the bag, put it--” Lupin mumbled, less than coherent as he recovered from the sudden emptiness. “Please, _please_ , Zenigata--”

“Condom,” Zenigata told him.

“I got you.” Lupin teased it down the length of Zenigata’s shaft with an expert hand. He’d never gotten to touch Zenigata before now, so he took a moment to stroke the cock that he’d been extolling the virtues of. “Later, I’m gonna suck you off--”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lupin,” Zenigata told him. He was busy trying to figure out the logistics of fucking in a car when he hadn’t done so since he was a much younger man. “How are you--”

“Hold still. Let me do the work.” Lupin pushed him back till Zenigata was flush to the seat again. Then he scooted forward, turned to face the front seat, and grabbed them with his hands, legs open over to Zenigata’s. Glancing back over his shoulder, he said: “Guide me.”

Zenigata wrapped his hand around Lupin’s hips, feeling the way the jut of them fit against his fingers. It was good, he thought, they were practically made to go together. Everything fit just right-- the way his hips felt in his hands, the way Lupin eased down onto his now-aching erection, the way he settled back against him. Zenigata was encased in heat, pressure promising relief to the cock that was all but throbbing, each hammering of his pulse reminding him of how badly he needed the other man.

Lupin let himself relax against Zenigata’s chest once he’d settled his full weight down, groaning low in his throat as he trembled and adjusted to the cock within him. They held still like that together, Lupin resting in the cage of Zenigata’s arms, his back to Zenigata’s chest. He was trapped and held in the way Zenigata had never let himself dream about before, but it felt so right to have his narrower frame, all strange angles, pressing against Zenigata’s broad chest.

“You are _so_ goddamn big. How is this dick even legal?” Lupin was babbling nonsense, then praise and jibes, panting soft words out when he could find them as Zenigata reached down and stroked Lupin’s cock, getting a feel for him. He rolled the foreskin back, teasing with a thumb along just beneath the crown. Lupin sighed and whined with every pass of his thumb.

“You going to fuck,” Zenigata said, breath fanning out against Lupin’s neck, “Or you going to sit here and sing my praises?”

Lupin obliged him by leaning forward, bracing his legs to each side of Zenigata’s. He grabbed the front seats and started to ride. He hadn’t lied when he said he was going to do the work, that was for sure, because he was using his whole body to ride -- pushing up with his legs and letting his arms and gravity control the downstroke, driving down onto Zenigata’s cock in a rush. The flex of his thighs made Zenigata shudder under him, but he pressed himself back against the seat and braced both feet against the floor, bucking up as Lupin pushed back into his lap. 

The car was starting to shake, high priced luxury shock absorbers keeping it from being a rattling ride as they fucked, making no noise to accompany the slap of skin, heavy breathing and the constant drip of obscenities that came out of Lupin’s mouth. Foul mouthed little gremlin just couldn’t _not_ talk, so Zenigata slid one hand up from his hip to his neck, gripping his throat briefly before he tapped his fingers against Lupin’s lips.

His lover got the hint, latched onto those fingers and started to suck, moaning as he finally found something to do with his mouth that wasn’t babble. All Lupin got out around Zenigata’s two thick fingers was a soft _uhn, uhn, uhn_ between sucks.

The windows were starting to fog the longer they were at it, grunting and groaning as they both stopped pretending they hadn’t wanted this for a long time. The slap of skin played as a counterpoint to the bass rumbling of Zenigata’s groans and Lupin’s higher pitched gasps starting to come in time with each whine of the shocks as the car rocked. 

When Zenigata finally came, it was with a bellow -- the voice so choked up over the last few weeks ripping free in a shout, hips flush to Lupin’s ass. He shot into the condom and bucked once, before fire raced through his thighs and calves. He had been in poor health just a few weeks ago, and fucking in the car might’ve been a risky venture for more than one reason. He was going to feel the burn from the exertion for a while.

Lupin whined piteously around his fingers, and Zenigata eased himself back down, taking his hand from Lupin’s mouth. With his hands free, Zenigata stroked Lupin’s flushed cock, alternating between dotting his shoulders with light kisses and fierce bites, leaving a trail to announce where he’d been. 

Three pumps and the overtaxed thief sobbed softly as he reached his own climax a moment later, and then melted back against Zenigata’s chest. He was speaking French now, no longer using Japanese for Zenigata’s benefit, mewling in his Grandfather’s tongue for God to have mercy on him. 

It took some wincing, shifting, and a condom tied off and dropped in the debauched gig bag Lupin had brought, but then they were settled. Zenigata’s shirt and pants were still open, Lupin was mostly naked except for his shirt, but the big man found a nice sprawl in the back and gathered Lupin against him to rest.

“Been waiting for _ever_ for that,” Lupin murmured once he could figure out how to use consonants again. 

“Did you? Even before--?” 

“Oh, Pops, you think I needed to fall for you to think about fucking you?” Lupin’s grin went monkey-sly, and he said, “Trust me, jail cells and interrogation rooms and the Zenigata Nightstick treatment… thoughts like that kept me warm more than a few nights!”

“Pervert,” Zenigata said, but kissed his sweaty hair anyway. 

“Pervert that you just fucked into submission in the back seat of a stolen Audi,” Lupin said in sing-song like a child, “but yeah, pervert.”

“Is it really stolen?”

“You are such a cop,” Lupin giggled. “Let it go, old man.”

For once, Zenigata did. He just sighed softly, and went back to the fuzzy post-sex afterglow, feeling warm and hazy. He traced patterns over Lupin’s skin, tracing words he still couldn’t say in kanji over his back: _I love you, I love you, I love you._

“I mean,” he finally said once he had collected himself a little bit more, hand pressing flat between Lupin’s shoulder blades, “you weren’t wrong.”

“What?”

“This isn’t the first stolen car I’ve fucked in,” Zenigata told him. Lupin’s crowing laugh gave him a warmth that had nothing to do with lust, easing his heart knowing that he’d made the right choice to admit he was guilty as charged. “Isn’t even the second or third, either.”

Lupin pressed his cheek to his chest, beaming all the while. “You going to tell me those stories, Pops?”

“You already read them, Lupin,” Zenigata said, tracing nonsense patterns down Lupin’s back. 

“Yeah, I skimmed a pile of third drafts with a lot of notes, but…” Lupin wriggled, till he was belly-to-belly with Zenigata and looking up at him with his chin resting on his own folded arms. “I kept thinking about what you said. What I saw in those notes.”

Zenigata sobered a little, a little of the warmth chased away as Lupin spoke. He let his hands rest at the base of Lupin’s back, carefully choosing his next words, “What about them?”

“‘Love and War with Lupin III’ is a terrible title. It’s just about actions around me. Not me as a person, not you the person taking them. Just these-- events around an idea,” Lupin began, tone cooling from bubbling warmth to a hazy calm. “It sounds like you were reacting to me, and never that you -- changed me or forced me to think or affected me. Like you’re merely a barometer of Lupin III, when that just isn’t so! I wasn’t kidding when I said you motivated me, and I won’t lie and not say that I didn’t have to take you into account when I worked. I did. You were… always there with me, you know? In spirit, at the very least.”

“Jigen said if I didn’t show up to a crime or two, you’d go looking for me. Is that true?”

“Yeah.” Lupin’s face split into a stupid grin. “I’ll tell you about the ‘Moneta’ crime spree later, but-- really, listen to me, okay?”

“I’m listening.”

Lupin wriggled up a bit, one hand pressing against the seat so he could better prop himself to look into Zenigata’s eyes. “You wrote this-- view of my story, but I don’t know yours. At all. I know-- I know you fell in love, and you got married. I know you had a kid, and you -- you kept reaching out to kids in need. That you’re dependable and honest, but passionate and sometimes stupidly headstrong. That you do everything with your whole heart, no matter how many times it’s been handed back broken.”

Zenigata felt the aforementioned organ clench in his chest, stuttering on a beat as Lupin spoke. “What about it?”

“Tell me the things I don’t know. The things I haven’t been around for. Make me live in _your_ margins for a little while,” Lupin said, before he was rolling his eyes and looking at the ceiling. “I was thinking, ah-- I might take some time off, you see. To, you know, see how my other half lives. Just for a little bit.”

“You’re going to play at being a citizen?” Zenigata asked, brows lifting. “Come play house until you get bored?”

“What? No!” Lupin went from hazy softness to bruised and lumpen sadness. “Pops, come on. I’m not-- I’m not that guy, okay. This isn’t a fucking lark.”

“So what is it?” Zenigata asked.

“I… I’m not good at this. It’s not gonna be dinner dates on the Rhône, I know. I -- I only ever tried _once_ , and picking out curtains turned into… well.” Lupin rested his brow against Zenigata’s, no longer willing to look him in the eyes. “You know where things are at with me and Fujiko now.”

“Lupin,” Zenigata caught his face between his hands, forcing Lupin to look him in the eyes as he sandwiched his round cheeks between his palms. “Lupin, shut up and listen to me.”

Lupin grunted, but otherwise assented.

“Lupin. I was a terrible husband. I am a workaholic, a driven man. I’m not happy without work, and neither are you. All the same, we-- love each other, yes?”

Lupin, face still held between Zenigata’s palms, made a little positive grunt and nodded as best as he was able.

“So… Lupin. I am not asking you to pick out curtains. I’m not-- I’m not even asking you to stop being Lupin III. It’s madness to try.” He eased his grip on Lupin’s face, watching the man puzzle through what he’d said. “I’m not asking you for anything. It can be fine, if-- we love each other, and that we know it doesn’t _work_.”

Understanding started to open up Lupin’s eyes. “Like you and Haruka.”

Zenigata tried not to flinch, and felt it pull his face to the side all the same. “Yeah. Like me and Haruka.” 

“Fuck that.” Lupin said the two words with remarkable clarity.

“Come again?”

“I said, ‘fuck that.’” Then he repeated it again in Japanese and then in English for good measure. “I’m not… I’m not just gonna dick down and dash, okay? I… I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to take some time off to figure that out. If you’ll, uh. Be fine with that. For a little while.”

“You know when I’m not on your tail my team and I get loaned out all over the place,” Zengiata pointed out, wondering if Lupin really knew what he was asking. “All of those other cases, all the stories where you’re not there? They happen _because_ you’re not there.”

“So what you’re saying is I have to take longer breaks between thefts,” Lupin says, brows up. 

“I mean, if that’s how you want to _take it,_ yes.” Zenigata stroked his hand down Lupin’s back, thinking quietly. There had been a thought, niggling at the back of his mind, but one he hadn’t dared voice yet.

“But it’s not how you want to take it,” Lupin said, nudging him. “Tell me. You’re plotting something, I can hear the gears grinding. Lube ‘em up! Let me have it.”

“Hah!” Of course he’d go straight to lube, Zenigata thought. Lupin was a horny little monkey. “I was just thinking… you could let me pick your targets, now and again.”

Lupin pressed both hands to Zenigata’s chest, pushing himself straight up to look down at Zenigata with wild, round eyes. “Are you saying -- _work together?_ ”

“In a way, yes,” Zenigata said, watching Lupin’s smile start to spread across his face.

“Tell me more!” The novelty of the idea made Lupin giddy, mischief and delight already lighting up his face. 

“I have a plethora of horrible, awful, but very wealthy people within my reach,” Zenigata said, eyes fixed on Lupin’s. He hoped the man could see how serious he was, laying out a plan that carried him from ‘occasional blind eye’ to ‘complete collusion.’ “People Interpol has a thousand files on, but have never been able to bring to justice. But they’re also people who could stand to be kneecapped, financially. Have the works they’ve pillaged from countries and people all over the world _redistributed._ Maybe, you know, Lupin III might take an interest in some of these men who flaunt their wealth but think they’re like gods, untouchable and unkind.”

“Robin Hood it, you mean?” Lupin looked thoughtful, but at least he hadn’t immediately shut it down.

“Not entirely. You will certainly get to live large on part of the proceeds,” Zenigata reassured him. He was Lupin III, he had to have more than just good will as an incentive. That only worked on Zenigata. “You’ll just give me a gap to wedge them open with Interpol, and then I can crack them open!”

Lupin was quiet, laying his head against Zenigata’s chest again. “Being so good is against my nature.”

“Is it, really?” Zenigata chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, suddenly terribly aware of the tenuousness of this moment, of everything they had only just started to build. A push too hard, too soon, could collapse their little house of cards. But there was a question that he needed to ask. “What about Cagliostro?”

“What about it?”

“You gained _nothing._ Not the counterfeiting plates, not any of the wealth that Clarisse did have, such as it was. You knew the secret of the castle. But you still did it. You saved her and her little County.”

“You know me, Pops, I’m a sucker for a pair of pretty eyes.”

Zenigata’s expression flattened out. “She was sixteen, Lupin.”

Lupin rolled his eyes, groaning. “I didn’t mean like that!”

“I know. But-- she was a child. Then, years later, suddenly you’re asking me to take care of Ami in the African savannah. Why-- why did you do those things?”

“Hey, Ami helped me make bank off Marco Polo, and you profited quite a bit too!” Lupin pointed out, turning defensive. “That wasn’t charity.”

“Please. You bent over backward to help her. Even if you did try to rob her girlfriend.”

“She sure knows how to pick ‘em, doesn’t she?” Lupin’s grin cut a crescent against Zenigata’s chest. “But-- I see where you’re going with this. Why can’t I be a useful thief, good all the time?”

“Not all the time,” Zenigata said. “Just more frequently. Sometimes you go out for selfishness and do good. Sometimes-- like Cagliostro-- you seem to make it a point to do good, to be… I don’t know, a white knight coming out on a gallant steed to save the day.”

“Who doesn’t like to be the hero of a fairytale, Pops?” Lupin shrugged his shoulders, not looking up at him. “I enjoyed it, but I don’t want to be a white knight all the time.”

“Ami wasn’t a fairytale. Ami was a damaged young woman in a terrible place,” Zenigata said. “Are you telling me you stole her because she honestly asked you too, or because you knew it was the right thing to do?”

“Augh…” Lupin hid his face in Zenigata’s chest, before he wriggled up and fetched his pants from the floor of the car. “C’mon, at least ask this shit after like, the second or third time you’ve fucked my brains out, Pops!”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t want to try and build a bridge here?” Zenigata asked as Lupin began to collect his clothes. “You knew I was a cop, Lupin--”

“You know I’m a thief!” Lupin snapped back. “Leopards and spots, old man.”

“But that doesn’t mean that bad men can’t do good things--”

“Or that good men can't do bad things--”

“I know! I’ve-- I’ve been that guy,” Zenigata said as Lupin slipped to the edge of the seat, letting Zenigata a chance to put his pants back on before the fight went any further. “Lupin, I have a Do Not Promote order.”

Lupin wriggled himself into his boxers, and fished up his pants. When he finally said something, it was only, “I know. Before you ask -- I knew before I got into your book.”

“I’ve done my bad shit,” Zenigata said, smoothing down his undershirt. He started to button up, wondering where his tie had ended up in the shuffle. “I-- I fucked up a lot, when I was younger. So did you.”

“We were kids. Well, I was a kid. You were a grown-ass man,” Lupin said, pulling his shirt on and starting on the buttons.

“We were younger men. But we both changed,” Zenigata pointed out, looking for his tie. “You-- you changed, and you changed me too. I know it’s strange to say, but-- Fujiko, Jigen, Goemon -- they’re all better people _because_ they’re with you. Three killers who have set aside some of their old ways.”

Lupin finally stopped there, shirt half unbuttoned. He rested his hands on his knees, and then opened the car door to get out. He groaned as he stretched, wincing a little as he took his first few steps. 

“I didn’t go _after_ any of that. It was just -- a side effect,” he said, standing in the parking garage, back to Zenigata. “It wasn’t the point. The theft was the thing! The adventure, the challenge--”

“But it _changed._ ”

“Fuck! Yes, fine, it did!” Lupin threw his hands in the air. “I don’t want it to, though! I want to be-- I want to be me, the me I built out of nothing! The me that-- that you love, right? Not this… idea of what you can make me. Right-- Right, Koichi? This-- ugly little man who steals things. Knave! Scoundrel! _Thief._ ”

Zenigata climbed out of the car, a rumpled mess. His shirt and pants being done up were his only saving grace. They were both a mess; sweaty, hair mussed, with bite marks running up and down Lupin’s neck. Lupin was glaring up in defiance, and Zenigata felt his heart lurch.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t ask again.”

“What will you do, then, Zenigata-keibu?” Lupin asked, glowering up at Zenigata. He refused to give an inch, but there was a grinding to his teeth, pressure to keep from showing a single tremor of fear.

“Love you,” Zenigata said with all solemness. “However you’ll let me.”

Lupin watched him for a moment, before he got into the driver’s seat. “Let’s get you home.”

Zenigata didn’t argue. He got in the back seat-- that was now only just airing out the smell of sex and sweat-- and let Lupin drive him home in tense silence.

  
  


+++

  
  


“I didn’t expect to see you back today,” Jigen said when Lupin came through the door. He was lounging on the couch in one of Lupin’s most daring hideouts -- a spacious apartment in one of the wealthiest districts in Lyon. If you were going to spend time under Interpol’s nose and having to be very careful about being seen, you could at least be housebound in luxury.

“I think we’re gonna go to Italy next,” Lupin said as he began to strip out of his disguise, heading for the master bedroom as he kept talking. “Haven’t used that mansion since we bought it. Maybe it’s time to just get some sun and relax.”

“First fight already, huh?” Jigen snorted softly, and then turned the channel, searching for some sport or another to watch. “Tch. You bring a guy back from the brink of death, and you already screwed it up. Gotta be a new record, Lupin.”

When Lupin didn’t answer, Jigen fished his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through it for a number. This one belonged to Ishikawa Goemon, luddite extraordinaire. 

_You come to Lyon?_

It was a few minutes before an answer came in, but that was relatively quick for Goemon. If he was off slicing up bamboo or punching waterfalls or whatever else he did, he might not answer for hours.

_I am nearby._

_Near enough to meet up outside the apartment?_

_Yes._

Jigen texted him the address of a little bistro in a more working-class section of Lyon, and then added _Be there in an hour?_

_I will meet you there._

Jigen pocketed his phone, and picked up his hat. He walked quietly over to the door to Lupin’s bedroom and peeked inside. His boss was scrubbing his face in the ensuite, probably getting the last of the spirit gum off. He could only hear the water, and barely see him bent over the sink. 

Lupin put his hands to his vanity countertop, and just leaned forward, head down. Jigen had seen him like this before -- frustrated over Fujiko when things began to conclude. 

Things with Pops were just beginning though. He had been wired for weeks -- between being sexually frustrated to the point that Jigen was sure he was going to rub a hole in his palm to hacking into the old man’s medical records to make sure he was properly mending, Lupin had been watching his paramour like he was the next big theft, the most spectacular job he was going to pull off. He was better than a diamond necklace over a pair of melon-sized breasts for Lupin, keeping his attention in a way that only his biggest heists had in the past. 

Which means a major trespass had been made already. It wasn’t surprising, really. The hornier Lupin was the more stupid his decisions were. Regular release was a must for him, though Jigen was happy to not be the one providing it these days. Whatever ran Lupin’s libido was like a machine, an infernal contraption that was constantly burning valuable fuel and kept him hungry for more, more, more.

For a while it had been good. Easy to pretend, fun once he got over himself. Early on he’d been a prick, but Jigen had put up with it for the work, then for love. Age had slowed them both down, though, and the people they became had less sharp edges. The love was still there, but Jigen and Lupin had both become very different men during that time.

They may have stopped, but the want had never abated. Whatever it was that demanded more still rattled Lupin’s ribs like the bars of a cage, and he wanted _more_ with Zenigata, that much was plain. But he had already fucked it up. Or the inspector had, Jigen amended. The old man was as stubborn as an ox and his tenacity was legendary. If he set himself to something, there was no budging him.

Jigen left Lupin alone to his thoughts. Lupin wouldn’t have talked about it if pressed, and so Jigen left him to it. He’d plan a job or he’d watch tv and drink a lot of beer. His clothes were still on and he was upright so he hadn’t hit the skids hard. Jigen would have to see how he was when he returned from his errand with Goemon for the real truth. Time alone with his thoughts would either get Lupin to make a plan, or to sink and wallow. 

Grabbing his own disguise from the pile in his own room, he got it in place. It added more meat to his face, taking away the gauntness and put a mustache over his chinstrap beard. Just enough to draw away Jigen Daisuke and leave his identity in question.

Goemon would be Goemon no matter what, but that was fine. They’d deal if something came up.

A short jaunt on foot let him admire the city; Lyon was nothing like his native Brooklyn, or the home away from home that San Francisco had become after his brief stint in the army. It was soaked with a thousand years of history, the weight of ages. America was a tiny infant and Lyon was an aging giant. 

When Jigen arrived at the bistro, Goemon was waiting for him. He sat down, ordered himself a sandwich and coffee, and Goemon got himself mocha latte. He must’ve been feeling terribly indulgent.

“I assume this is about Lupin and Zeneigata-keibu?” Goemon said once they’d both had their coffee delivered.

“That, and I wanted a lunch free of sulking,” Jigen said, leaning back in his seat with his hand around his mug. “But you’re not wrong.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t know. Lupin went through a bunch of prep this morning, said not to wait up for him,” Jigen shrugged one shoulder, “and then was back by the afternoon.”

The only sign Goemon gave of his interest was the slight lifting of his brows. “So his night of romance was killed before it could even begin?”

“Looks like. I just don’t know which one of them put it in the ground,” Jigen replied. 

Food arrived; Jigen ate and Goemon thought in silence. It gave them both time to think things over. 

“I think we should go see the old man,” Jigen finally said as he wiped crumbs from his beard. “If something’s up, I want to know.”

“I concur,” Goemon said, contemplating the remains of his coffee in his cup. “He’s endured so much already, I should hate to see him suffer further. He has earned respite.”

“Can you go keep an eye on his apartment, while I get some things from the store?” Jigen asked. “Subtle like, I mean.”

That meant ‘don’t stand dramatically on a roof, hakama flapping in the wind,’ but sometimes Goemon needed to be reminded.

“I will await your arrival,” Goemon said before he finished his coffee. 

“I’ll text you when I get close, okay? We’ll meet up again.” 

They parted ways, and Jigen tried to think of what the man would need. Fresh off a plane to a place he hadn’t seen in months. He probably hadn’t expected to be gone that long, so groceries were probably going to be a definite need. Basics and staples right off, plus beers and cigarettes.

Except, where was he gonna find the guy’s Shinsei’s? Jigen had given up Pall Malls since they were harder to find than Marlboros, and Lupin’s favorite Gitanes were everywhere. Ah, well, he’d have to skip that one. Import beer he could find easy, but Shinseis were a terribly specialized smoke to find in France.

He did the basics -- a few perishables, canned stuff, cup noodles and a few other things. When he walked past the imports aisle, he realized he was forgetting something really important.

_Goemon? Change of plans. Go to the Asian market. You’ll know more about what he’d want there than me. Pick him up some good groceries._

_I will do so._

That was the nice thing about Goemon, Jigen thought as he pocketed his phone. The guy was to the point in his responses. No questions. Just give him a task, and he’d do it to the best of his ability. 

Once he had two bags full of basic food needs, Jigen hailed a cab, texted Goemon to let him know he was enroute. A few minutes later he got a response that said the samurai was as well.

Zenigata lived in a small complex. None of those sprawling campuses with all the amenities, his apartment building was made of concrete, an aging relic that was probably as old as he was. It wasn’t disability friendly, it had no laundry room -- it was just the basics, which probably suited Zenigata just fine. It’d suit Jigen, and he’d long ago realized that he and Zenigata had quite a few things in common.

Jigen had also realized that it was pretty much official now - Zenigata was a part of the family. It had been basically true for a long time now, because they knew he could be relied on to help when the chips were down and do the right thing in the name of greater good, including turning a blind eye when Lupin and company skipped out on certain crimes. He’d contacted Lupin for help himself more than once, and had worked to protect them more than once, putting himself between the gang and harm.

Zenigata had loved Lupin for longer than any of them realized it, Jigen thought. But that checked out - Lupin snuck into your heart like the thief he was, picking all it’s locks and throwing it open to make himself comfortable. He didn’t even do it on purpose: stealing was what he did, as easy as breathing.

Goemon joined him in front of the building, and they went up the steps just in time to see Zenigata come out of the apartment and throw a bag over the balcony wall to the dumpster below. Jigen took a moment to appreciate that he rarely got to see the man in a t-shirt and jeans. He filled both out real nice, and if you added biker leathers he would have looked at home in one of the many leather daddy bars Jigen had frequented when he was a much younger man. He had a type, and Zenigata fit the bill. Lupin didn’t realize how lucky he was to have a shot at that, but then he never did.

“Hey,” Jigen said, nonchalant as two wanted thieves went down the walkway to the home of an agent of Interpol.

Zenigata stopped, looking between the two of them. Jigen watched him weigh the options in his mind, before Zenigata put his hands on his hips and dropped his head for a moment. Then he gestured to the door.

“Get inside before somebody sees you,” Zenigata told them.

Obliging him, Jigen and Goemon swept inside. The place smelled funky - three months of sitting idle meant that even the hardiest of plants had died, and food had molded where it lay. Combined with the scent of chemical cleaners, it made for an unpleasant aroma. 

“See you got right to work,” Jigen said as he and Goemon both set grocery bags down on the table. “Figured out might need some grocery when you got back.”

Zenigata looked at them a moment, before he looked away, and then to the side. This was going to be a struggle for him, Jigen realized. The unspoken was spoken now, and couldn’t be undone. Just as Jigen had realized that this was someone he slipped into the list of precious people that must be protected, Zenigata was realizing that he was loved beyond just Lupin. Lupin came with a family. 

“Thanks,” Zenigata finally said. No ‘don’t be so familiar,’ no refusal of aid. Just a thank you.

Jigen rewarded him with a crooked grin. “Well, it was sort of our fault, so. Amends, yeah?”

Zenigata took the offered excuse with a nod. Yes, let it be amends; sugar coating over a bitter pill. He’d work the rest out in time, no need to push it when something had happened between him and Lupin. He needed baby steps to being cared about.

“Goemon and I were in the area, so we thought we’d drop in,” Jigen began, but Zenigata shook his head. 

“You don’t need to lie to me,” Zenigata said, folding his arms over his chest. “Lupin went back to you angry when he had some sort of plan for the evening. You’re doing what you do best-- looking to see if you need to guard him from some new vector of harm.” 

Right to the point, then. Jigen didn’t flinch, but the statement landed closer to home than he cared to admit to Zenigata right now. 

“I have no idea what is going on with your relationship with Lupin,” Goemon interjected, saving Jigen from having to answer. “Whatever he may have done, Lupin does not dictate our actions. We decide where we put our efforts. We came to see you and inquire about your wellbeing.”

Zenigata looked at them both, before he relaxed. His shoulders dropped an inch, and he stopped folding his arms, letting them drop.

“Let’s get the grocery put away, and you can tell me what you’ve been up to for the last couple of months,” Zenigata said, and that was that. Something missing in their little tribe fit neatly in the gap and Jigen could almost hear the click of it locking into place. The family circle was just a little bit wider now, but no less tight for it.

Felt good, Jigen realized. Felt right to acknowledge. Like maybe they were all just about whole, now.

The way it segued naturally felt right, too. They went from grocery to some more tidying, to Jigen taking over the stove to make dinner. Goemon and Zenigata fell into quiet conversation about some topic from home, speaking Japanese in a way that made Jigen’s heart hurt. He couldn’t place it at first, but he figured out what it was when he heard Zenigata codeswitch unconsciously, something thatGoemon guarded himself against religiously.

Jigen had heard Zenigata speak in French more often than he had in his native Japanese, and when he conversed it was a pidgin Japanese-French, which wasn’t uncommon around Lupin’s crew. The thing Jigen noticed most was that Zenigata had to consciously think about staying in the language he’d been raised in. Goemon didn’t.

Zenigata had been in Europe as long as they had. He left his home, where he heard his native language daily, for this place where he had learned language after language after language to do his job.

When Jigen started plating up and joined the other two at the table, he stayed in Japanese. Wasn’t his first language, but he knew his father’s tongue as well as his mother’s Polish, just a sample of the pack of New York immigrant mutts that his family had sprung from. He’d already made dinner, so he couldn’t see a good reason not accommodate the man’s other unspoken needs. 

Dinner was German sausage and Polish perogies, with a mixed side of onions and sauerkraut. The beer he paired with it was Belgian. The language at the table was Japanese. What a world, Jigen thought. 

“So what did you do while I was down for recovery?” Zenigata asked between bites.

“Oh, you know. Basically laid low. Lupin didn’t want to make waves, thought you deserved a chance to get your feet back under you before we made a move on anything,” Jigen said, cutting into his sausage. “We found a place to stay, and settled in for a wait.”

“Yata said you dropped off the radar fast after the obligatory chase,” Zenigata confirmed. 

“Eh, we needed a break too,” Jigen said. He didn’t want to get into the whole idea that a highly stressed Lupin was a dangerously stupid Lupin. Zenigata knew.

Zenigata gave a little nod, and let it go at that.

“How has your recovery been?” Goemon asked, frowning at the food but eating it dutifully. “You look far more hale than you were when we saw you last.”

“Still below the weight I was when the camellia job went south,” Zenigata said, before he laughed a little, the walls around him dropping in inches. “Don’t know if I’ve replaced all the muscle mass, or if I’ve just not replaced the love handles.”

“Your biceps are still as big as Goemon’s head, so you’re probably doing okay in the muscle department,” Jigen said with a grin and was rewarded with another laugh. Goemon looked far less amused than Zenigata did, but the joke wasn’t for him, anyway.

Goemon excused himself after the meal. He said he had someplace he had to be, but Jigen suspected that he was going to go check on Lupin. That was fine - sometimes Jigen had to trust him to step up and keep an eye on their fearless leader. 

Once they were settled on the couch, Jigen looked at the beer in his hand and said, “I gotta ask you one thing, now that it’s just us.”

Zenigata nodded. “Go ahead.”

Jigen took a breath, let it sit in his lungs for a moment, before he finally said: “Why did you take Lupin’s gun?”

Zenigata looked at him for a long moment, heartbeats passing with nothing in response. Then he looked away and said, “It was a wild thought. At the time I -- Everything hurt. I couldn’t breathe, I could barely get through my days. It was-- at least something I could control. I had felt this thing eating me from the inside out, and it came with a terminal prognosis.”

“So like-- cancer.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zenigata scrubbed the back of his neck with his empty hand. “You ever watched someone die from cancer? My Dad went that way. Throat cancer.”

“Yeah,” Jigen said, feeling muscles standing tense in his neck. “My sister.”

Zenigata sat there, beer gripped loosely with his hand. “I’m sorry. It’s hell. Shit way to die.”

“Oh, I know,” Jigen said, and let his next swig of beer sweep the sourness of bile from his tongue, replacing it with hoppy bitterness. “S’why I went for the gun. Chemo’s fucking expensive, my Dad was a useless sack of shit and my Ma was doing her best. Somebody had to be the fucking earner. I got into crime, then I went for the army, and… she died while I was overseas. Pancreatic cancer. She got four years from diagnosis to death.”

“My father died while I was fresh out of college, trying to be the cop he wanted me to be,” Zenigata said, looking at his bottle now, neck still wrapped loosely in his fingers. “He never got to see his granddaughter.”

Jigen squirmed in the moment of quiet, unexpected empathy, and then lifted his beer bottle in the only toast he could manage. “Fuck cancer.”

“Fuck cancer, indeed.”

They took a long drink and the silence lingered.

“Think we needed something stronger for that,” Zenigata finally said. 

“Yeah,” Jigen agreed. “You bring any of that top shelf shit back from Japan?”

“Ah, no,” Zenigata laughed, shaking his head. “I did put it in a safer place, in case Haruka got the wild idea about destroying it, though.”

“Not a fan of the drinking?” Jigen clucked his tongue. “Tch! Women.”

“Not at the rate I was doing it at the time, and for a bit after,” Zenigata said, before he drained his bottle. “Right now a couple of beers is about all I want to indulge in.”

“Well, we got that covered for you.”

“Thanks.” Zenigata set the bottle down on the end table, and then leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, looking down at the floor. 

Jigen began to sense a tenor shift, watching the big man work through something. What, he didn’t know, but he was sure that Zenigata was going to tell him. 

“Thanks again, for everything. I’m sorry that I put you all in-- in the positions you were in,” Zenigata began. “Not-- not that you didn’t help put me there, but -- I could have been less… cruel. To Lupin. To you, especially.”

“Me?”

“I preyed on everything I knew about you, and about you and Lupin. Then I put you in the untenable place of potentially having killed me by proxy,” Zenigata said, eyes still on the floor. “I know-- I was in a terrible place, but I wish I had thought more clearly about what the consequence could be.”

“Lupin told me you tried to set your house on fire, Zenigata,” Jigen said, and though he could feel his temper starting to bubble up in his guts, he refused to give it a voice. “You protected us till your damn dying breath, so don’t give me this guilty shit. Was I mad about the gun? Only at myself. Was Lupin mad at me? Hell yeah. But I deserved it. It’s my goddamn job to watch for that shit. I shouldn’t have been so distracted. Shouldn’t have thought about catering to Lupin’s hurt feelings instead of the fact you were falling apart of me in front of my damn eyes.”

“I’m not your responsibility!” Zenigata grotested, straightening up.

“You damn well were!” Jigen snapped back. He hadn’t bought groceries to throw a goddamned pity party. “This isn’t a fucking guilt off, so don’t try it with me, Pops. You were deep in the shit. I had all five of my senses and I wasn’t coughing up blood. You needed better, and in the instant -- I prioritized the wrong guy.”

Zenigata looked at Jigen, his eyes bright. Jigen felt something coming, and he didn’t know what until Zenigata had thrown his arms around him and dragged him into a crushing hug. He fumbled his beer and it hit the floor, the remains of it dripping on the hardwood floor.

“My beer!” Jigen gasped out as his ribs were compressed. 

“The floor’s seen worse,” Zenigata said, and held him for a few moments more.

When he was released, Jigen sucked in a breath and let it expand his lungs out to something closer to human sized. He had to give it to the old man. Zenigata was a brawny son of a bitch, even if he had been recovering.

“You’re a good man, Jigen Daisuke,” Zenigata said, mouth drawn into a line, as solemn as a monk. 

“Ah, stop, you’re gonna give me a nervous rash with that shit,” Jigen said, getting up to grab his bottle from the floor. “Christ Almighty, you have arms like girders!”

“Good! They should be!” Zenigata laughed, and it broke the tension, pouring relief out for both of them. “How can I do my job, if I can’t hold a thief down for more than a minute?”

“You gotta point, Pops,” he said, reaching out to clasp his shoulder. 

They fell into clean-up after that, and Jigen summoned a cab via phone afterwards. There wasn’t much else to say, and falling into small talk wasn’t easy for either of them. Things had been said, kindnesses exchanged, and when Jigen walked down the steps to the street where his cab was waiting, he felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.

Things were looking up, he realized. Summer was full of growth and potential, and come the fall, they’d reap what they’d sown, one way or the other.


	8. The Comfort of Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, getting back to normal is the hardest thing you can do -- and the most valuable.

After weeks of illness, Zenigata was only just starting to really bounce back. He had two weeks of coughing, a week of coughing and recovering from a wreck, and then nearly dying in the fourth week of hacking up his lungs. After that, he had a week on bedrest and transfusion, plus a high iron diet to help him recover after the bloodloss. 

That brought him back to where he could get up and go, move around again. The month after that was working toward true recovery. Getting back on his feet, then getting back to the gym after illness that had sapped his strength and eaten into muscle mass. His weight loss had been obvious by the time he’d been cut loose from the hospital, but he'd finally passed the physical to return to duty.

Preparing for travel and getting plenty of debriefs between then and now, well, that had brought him to his final weeks before he’d return to Lyon. Zenigata had stayed home in Japan a total of twelve weeks, but only half of those had been in passably good health. Lupin had left at the end of week five-- Yata still had to pursue his case and the man had to escape. 

Twelve weeks was three months, and three months was the longest stretch of time Zenigata had spent home in Japan in the past ten years, and all he could think about was getting out of the country. Zenigata couldn’t wait to leave home, for a change, and return to his ‘normal’ life in Lyon, France. Even if he got to see Toshiko again, even if he got to walk the paths of his old neighborhood, even when he sat in his garden and admired the bright red camellias he had planted out of spite, to spit in the face of trauma. Even after all that, he longed to go to what was now ‘home.’

Home was supposed to be right where he was. But for all that he didn’t hate the house in Chiyoda, he didn’t know how to love it anymore, either. Adrift, he counted the days until he could return to work and get his life back on track. 

From his first step back into Lyon and to his first day at his dusty desk, Zenigata still didn’t feel normal. He should have expected something like what happened in the car park. He should have expected Lupin to say one thing and then do another anyway. 

He shouldn’t have believed that love was enough to change anybody, really. It hadn’t changed Zenigata, and it wouldn’t change Lupin, not in any way that would change things between _them_. He knew how easy it was to love a person and then be fucking stupid about it, so he put the hurt aside and went to work on what he could do: move on and get back to normality. Things were ‘normal’ between him and Lupin, and he’d have to get back to it feeling like normal.

Work helped. There was plenty of it too, and not just at the office. Cleaning his apartment after three months of absence when he’d really only expected to be gone for two weeks at the most was unpleasant and took a few days. A layer of dust coated everything from his bed to his shelves. The smell of the bathroom bordered on biohazard. A bag of potatoes had grown root tentacles and was trying to escape his dry goods basket. 

The sight of the potato had spooked him so badly that when Jigen and Goemon showed up on his doorstep his first night home to replace all the rotten food he’d swept out into the trash, it was almost a relief to have a distraction.

Life seemed easier after they left. Something had changed between them, far more easily than it had with him and Lupin. Jigen’s stance was clear -- they were friends now, and that was simply how it worked. Goemon already respected him, and his friendship sprang from that source. 

It was a little bit sobering, knowing that he had truly been absorbed into the Lupin Collection. For what it was worth, at least he felt they cared in their own strange way. Even if things wouldn’t work out, it was nice to know, a balm on his injured pride.

He was back in the office on the second day, ready to sink his teeth into it like a Kobe beef center cut steak. If his team had been slacking he was going to run them so hard around the Interpol campus _they_ were going to have trouble breathing. Vacation time was over. The old man was back and he was ready to work. He needed to work, to grab on to the normal with both hands and pull himself toward it, bury the longing that had nearly killed him and let the work eat up his time.

When the second day passed with no visits, texts, or calls that couldn’t be sourced to Yata, Zenigata resolved to put the previous day -- and it’s feverish, needy touches -- far from his mind. It was okay, he told himself. Wasn’t at the first time at this particular rodeo, even if he felt like he’d gotten gored on the horns of disappointment.

More days passed, and the routine was comfortable, like climbing into a cozy sweater that might be a bit threadbare but fit just right. Each day after he returned from the office, he tackled another room to clean. It was what he needed. Steady. Sure. Productive.

Everything got washed and reorganized. All of his ashtrays got cleaned and put under the sink so they could stay out of sight and out of mind. The bedroom was straightened, every single piece of linen washed so that when he crawled into bed alone it was at least soft and comfortable. Bathroom came after that, scrubbing right down to the grout. He’d never been a neat man - work didn’t allow him much time to fuss over things like cleaning behind the toilet, but he made it a point to get it done. Last thing he wanted to do now was lay in the squalor that had only grown worse in his long absence. Letting your home become a dump was a great way to keep feeling like garbage.

Zenigata came home on the fourth day and finished the cleaning, leaving the little house shrine last. He gave his bows to his parents and to Oscar, before he tended to its care and then replaced the offering in front of it. Their framed pictures, decorated with black ribbon, all stared back out at him impassively. 

“Sorry,” he said, head down and hands pressed together. “You have to wait a little longer to see me again.”

It had been a full week home when Zenigata settled in for an evening of reviewing training plans, checking on where his team had been sent. He was flipping through a take out menu and considering dinner when the doorbell rang. Checking his phone didn't show any messages from Yata, who usually warned before he came over, and he wasn't expecting any packages. Zenigata answered the door to find a delivery boy in a hoodie, with a big bag in both hands. 

“Delivery for Zenigata.”

“I didn’t order anything,” he said.

“I know.” The delivery boy tilted his head up, and Lupin's face peered out of the hoodie. “Can I come in, make you dinner?” 

Zenigata tilted his head. There was no jutting mouthed, monkey lipped smile. No cockiness. He’d even asked nicely, staying in Japanese and using the most polite of phrasing. This was a penitent Lupin. 

Zenigata had never seen Lupin like this up close. It was almost enough to let him in and kiss him in some ‘you had me at hello’ bullshit, but if Lupin was here to do something to make amends, he would hold off on that. Lupin could just be here to have a nice meal, thank him for vigorous car sex, and say he’d see him on the other side of a calling card. Anything was possible, when you were dealing with Lupin III.

"Fine,” he said, and stepped aside.

Lupin entered and headed to the small kitchenette that had recently been scrubbed and restocked. He smirked a little once he saw the state of it, running his fingers over the counter tops.

“Guess it was a little hairy when you got back, huh?” he said, looking over all the freshly cleaned things.

“I had a potato doing it’s best octopus impression,” Zenigata said, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning against the kitchen table, the better to keep himself from reaching for the impossible. “Including trying to climb the wall to escape out a window.” 

Lupin shuddered, and made a little gagging noise. “Careful, I brought the fixings for au gratin. Don’t put me off the potatoes by comparing them to an octopus!”

“I forgot! You hate octopi, don’t you?” Zenigata cracked a smile, practically confessing he had not forgotten at all.

“Fibber,” Lupin said as he began to put things away. He’d definitely brought more food than exactly necessary, along with a couple bottles of wine. He had a messenger bag, which he did not unpack. He just left it to the side, resting on Zenigata’s low framed couch. 

“So what are you making?” Zenigata said as he leaned against the table.

“Well, normally my go-to wooing meal, especially for people I want to work with, is my grandmother’s ragu,” Lupin said, scratching the back of his neck, before he tilted back and gave a crooked smile. Zenigata traced the tension at the corners with his eyes, realizing how brittle the facade was. There was an equal chance that it could be a carefully crafted lie. 

Zenigata chose to embrace it as real. “So what are you making to woo old cops who won’t lay down and die?”

“My father’s pepper steak and au gratin,” Lupin said. He laughed, and turned back to his work. “You know, the funny thing? Grandma’s ragu -- it comes from my grandfather’s wife. My actual grandmother, my father’s mother, was a poor Italian Jew. Just the damn maid. She stole the ragu and made it better, you see.”

There it was, a sliver of something real in a shred of information. A secret surrendered. Something penciled in a margin of a journal somewhere: _Arsène Lupin II was a bastard._ You could certainly add the note _there is probably no one born under the name Arsène Lupin II, and it was assumed like a title later in life._ Did his father make sure his son was the next Arsène Lupin, or did the man called Lupin III come into the world with another name? 

Trust earned Lupin a win, and Zenigata came up close behind him-- a hand briefly at his back, before he reached out to get his peeler and a paring knife. “I’ll help with the potatoes.”

“Thanks,” Lupin said, and they stood shoulder to shoulder as they took skins off potatoes together.

“My father was a staunch traditionalist. My mother was the typical stay at home type,” Zenigata said, a little tit for tat offered. Truth from Lupin earned a story from him. “I didn’t learn to cook until Haruka got pregnant. Toshiko was a fighter, and it made for a very hard pregnancy.”

“Aren’t all Zenigatas fighters?” Lupin asked, cocking his head. 

“Mmm. Depends on who you ask. My sisters would say that I’m the black sheep rebel, always in trouble,” Zenigata said as he took the brown skin off potatoes inch by inch, revealing its tender flesh. “I’m guessing you dug up my mug shot in your research.”

“Yeah,” Lupin said brightly. “Some letters too.”

“Oh, so you know I only got to go to a normal high school because my father used his clout, then?” Zenigata snorted, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize how damned lucky I was.”

“Yeah. What did he do, anyway?”

“He was a division chief.” Zenigata straightened up his back, thrusting his chest out in an imitation of a man no longer with them, knowing that it probably just reminded Lupin of the man he’d between twenty years ago, stern and bold, hungry for the hunt.

“‘Every Zenigata serves the law,” Zenigata proclaimed, his paring knife thrust upward for emphasis. He collapsed down on himself, exhaling with a laugh. “That was one of his favorite things to say. Then I came along, and… well, I almost broke the streak.” 

“What kind of streak?”

“Every generation, we have at least one Zenigata in law enforcement. My sisters wanted no part of it, so they expected me to do it. I wanted to run off and join the JSDF. Go Coast Guard. Get the hell away from my family.” Zenigata sighed, putting down the down the paring knife for a moment and adding the peeled potato to the pile they were starting to collect. “I did it for a whole three year hitch, from eighteen to twenty-one. Got shipped off to Somalia, since the JSDF Coast Guard was offering support in the area against the piracy going on.” 

“You went after Somali pirates?” Lupin stopped peeling potatoes. Then he put them down entirely and grabbed Zenigata by the arms and gave him an urgent little shake, round eyes wide. He leaned in and whispered, “Are you telling me I wasn’t your first international criminal?”

“You were not,” Zenigata laughed, before he leaned down to kiss that astonished look off Lupin’s face. Lupin accepted it eagerly, and something slid back into place between them. A good something, but Zenigata didn’t have a name for it as they enjoyed comfortable contact with each other.

“I can’t believe it!” Lupin’s eyes were wide when he pulled back, the over-acted shock covering some of the real surprise. “Here I thought you were pure and virginal, unaware of the ways of the jet setting international crime scene before I swept into your life.”

“There was nothing jetsetting about poor and desperate Somalis turning to piracy,” Zengiata said. He put down his own tools, putting his weight against the counter with his hip. “Anyway-- after my hitch Dad got sick, and Mom needed me home. He demanded I get on following in the family tradition, and… so I went to college, got a degree in law enforcement, and did exactly as I was told.”

“It’s so hard to think of you as this-- rebel. Trying to do your own thing,” Lupin said, looking up at him. “Or caving to expectation, for that matter. You’ve never been the type.”

“No? I still do it. The only reason my team is successful at anything is because I frequently throw the book out the window and do things my way,” Zenigata laughed in the face of Lupin’s confusion. “I don’t follow the rules. It gets me into trouble all the damned time.”

“Never really thought of it like that."

“As for caving, it’s complicated. My relationship with my mother was much better than with my father,” Zenigata explained, lips twisting up as he kept his meaner thoughts about it to himself. “My sisters were ‘Daddy’s little girls,’ but I was the mama's boy.”

“That, I can see,” Lupin said with a crooked grin. 

“In my first year on the force I knocked up my girlfriend,” Zenigata continued, scratching the back of his neck as he looked to the side, unable to meet Lupin’s gaze. “We married right after my father died, and then my mother followed my father to the grave shortly after. You know basically all the rest.” 

“I mean, all the rest that revolved around me, yeah, but…” Lupin waved it waved it off with one hand, unconcerned. “I told you, I want to know your stories from you. The ones I’m not the star of, you know?”

Zenigata sliced through potatoes, thinking for a moment. This was the second time he asked, and he sounded just as sincere as the first -- though that encounter in the car had ended poorly, he could tell Lupin had wanted things to go differently here. He wouldn’t have come back like this if he didn’t, positioning himself to spend time with his pants on at the dinner table and have an adult conversation. 

The problem was not knowing. The unknown aggravated Zenigata. An investigator right down to his bloody marrow, he wanted to know the truth. But he could be patient, and he could let Lupin have what he wanted, so long as he got what he needed too. 

“Well, the faster dinner is on the table, the faster you’ll hear them,” Zenigata said, looking down into Lupin’s expectant face. 

“Well, alright then,” Lupin said, grinning broadly. He cracked his knuckles and stretched his arms above his head, like he was prepping for some important but arduous task. “How do you like your steak?”

“Medium-rare,” Zenigata said.

“A man of taste and class!” Lupin replied, as he looked around the kitchen. “So where do you keep your pans?”

+++

Dinner conversation was surprisingly pleasant. Lupin was happy to find that Zenigata could talk about more than work. He could talk about politics, art, music, podcasts he listened to on plane trips and working out. The rich tapestry of Zenigata Koichi that had been hidden by a trenchcoat and fedora was now coming into full view. 

Parts of Zenigata’s past which had never mattered before were suddenly of interest to Lupin. Zenigata’s time in Somalia brought him his first real boyfriend and his first real heartbreak when he found out he was the stand-in for the older sailor’s wife. He talked about coming back home, going through school, a brief flirtation with amphetamines -- all too common with Japanese students and salarymen -- and his second crush, an older student. In fact, Zenigata seemed to have a thing for being the _kohai_ in a relationship in his youth, gravitating toward the older and more experienced.

It was strange to think of a Zenigata that had dreamed of anything but being a cop. He was so good at it, too. He’d grown from Coast Guard to beat cop to Interpol inspector -- started with international pirates, ended up working the traditional Chiyoda beat that his forefathers had worked before him before climbing up the chain to be the one who chased Lupin. It was a story worthy of its own book, on its own terms. 

When conversation tapered off, they both rose to help with cleaning; shoulder to shoulder at the little sink, they washed dishes and switched gears to music, and then to reading. Eventually it slid into just quietly drying plates together, soaking up the other’s presence like greedy little sponges who found themselves tossed in the same puddle.

“Thank you,” Zenigata said as he put a dish away. The silence freshly broken, he paused before he continued, “This was really nice. Been a long time since I had anything, uh, close to a date.”

Lupin gestured to himself with a flourish, and executed half a bow before the sink. “I am _Arsène Lupin III,_ womanizer and cad, after all. I’ve got lots of practice in wooing!”

Zenigata laughed, and Lupin reveled in it. When he wasn’t giving the super villain laugh of triumph over a captured Lupin, he had a nice laugh. It was just like Zenigata himself. Big and noisy, warm and boisterous, full of energy. The sort of laugh that belonged at a fireplace with kids around it, hearing stories of past exploits, coming from a man that had a long, full life.

When he fell quiet again, putting the last of the dishes away, Lupin leaned against Zenigata's fridge and watched him.The movement of muscle in his upper arms was hypnotic when you could see it, and with his shirt sleeves rolled up after dinner, Lupin was happy to enjoy the understated gun show. It wasn’t just the muscles that kept him rooted, though they were an excellent incentive. It was that he was here seeing the unvarnished truth of Zenigata Koichi, man of Interpol who did his own dishes. 

There was only one problem. He didn’t know what happened next. He’d got out his frantic need for sex a week ago, but that hardly meant it was down for the count. He could be raring to go if Zenigata gave him so much a single signal that it was time to get down. So far, he hadn’t been given one. The cost of being alone after all those years might be that he simply didn’t leap to his libido immediately.

Or maybe, Lupin quietly admitted as he looked away, glancing to the family shrine on a shelf and a single painting on the wall, Zenigata wanted to know where they stood before he jumped into bed with him again.

This was intimate, though. Not the sticky sort he preferred, but… The last time he’d felt this good about sharing space with a person had been years ago with Fujiko. That had to mean something.

“What’s on your mind?” Zenigata asked, not letting the silence stretch too long.

“Just-- history,” Lupin said, waving a hand.

“Oh? Personal, or a broader sense?” Zenigata tilted his head, expression wide open. Lupin felt his heart flip. 

That was the face of a man who would listen, eyes open and forward, no tense lines around the mouth, not a hint of resistance. That was a face that said _talk to me_ , and Lupin felt his tongue go a little loose the same time ice water suddenly sloshed around in his belly.

“Personal,” he said.

“I see,” Zenigata said, and he leaned against the counter. “Something you want to share, or…?”

The question sent Lupin’s thoughts awhirl. Did he want to share? He was certain that Zenigata would listen, even if Fujiko was part of the history. He’d judge - he was a cop, he was judgmental by nature - but Lupin knew he wouldn’t be cruel about it. He could say what was on his mind, if he wanted, and really be heard.

“I was just thinking, it’s been a while since things were like this. Decades, even,” he told Zenigata. “It’s -- nice.”

“But it makes you nervous.”

Lupin arched his brow. “Is this the interrogation room, Zenigata-keibu?”

“No,” Zenigata said, but he reached out to offer his hand. “Just an observation.”

“Ahh, dating a cop! What am I thinking!” Lupin took the hand and let Zenigata pull him in for closeness. “You’re going to learn all my tics and tricks.”

“I already know them, Lupin,” Zenigata said, lips twisting up into a smile. He was already bending for the kiss when he said, “I’m wise to you, thief.”

Lupin pressed against his chest with both hands, bringing up Zenigata short of his goal. 

Zenigata watched his face carefully, suddenly concerned. “Lupin?”

“How is this going to work, then?” he asked, suddenly wanting to know just where the opposite ends of their work would exist with them. 

“How do you want it to work?” Zenigata asked, tilting his head again.

“I asked you first,” Lupin said, pressing against his chest still.

A shadow crossed over Zenigata’s face. Lupin could see it happen; the intimacy closed off, the man shuttered up like a business closing for the night. That was it, that thing he’d seen in the car that sent him straight home to be angry for a day, and then miserable for the rest of the week. He’d gone back into the street only to keep _thinking_ about it, hitting up old haunts and bars. He’d finally seen past those shutters, and every time Zenigata closed off, it was like someone was denying him sunlight.

“I told you in the car,” Zenigata said, and it was more muted now. 

Lupin realized he’d seen this Zenigata before, he realized: numb and empty, only excited by the chase. But there was no chase here, just the capture. Lupin was his, to not make it too fine a point. That Zenigata was gone, he had thought, but here was evidence that the cold man could be revived, his heart broken anew. 

“Only two ways, then?” It came out sharper than it should. Lupin tried to tame his tongue but every word came out edge-first. “Play by your rules, or simply -- not have anything at all?”

“Lupin,” Zenigata said as he straightened up, carrying him just a little further away. The lines were back; the natural downward curl of his lips pulled tighter. He looked fifteen years younger in the worst way. “You haven’t voiced an alternative. Tell me what you want. What am I supposed to be to you?”

 _What am I to you?_ Lupin’s guts churned with the echo of another lover, another place. Someone he loved so much, but-- they never did work, did they? Needed to be one upping each other. Needed to be free to chase, to game, to be as much rivals as anything else. He needed that challenge; a lover that couldn’t do that couldn’t love him entirely.

“I want you to _know me_ ,” he said, trying to find the right arrangement of words to pull things together. “I want to know you.”

The invisible shutters cracked open. Zenigata’s eyes traced the planes of his features. Lupin wondered if he could guess at how deep ‘Lupin III’ ran, or what lurked under his skin, hiding in his bones, down to his genes. “Know you, Lupin?”

“What am I to you?” Lupin remembered the words, from another mouth. This time he said them, and he wanted to know the answer.

“You are Lupin,” Zenigata said, but he started counting off words to go with the name. “Scoundrel. Thief. Nemesis. Rival. Friend. Lover. Partner, if you’ll have me.”

The word ‘if’ was so big, laid so much out. So much hinged on the choice whether or not to accept Zenigata under any of those words. Labels! He hated them, but at the same time, they were comfortable. He could wear every one of those labels like any number of colored jackets, but he changed colors like he changed moods. He picked up and discarded them for the role of master thief, every day. 

Zenigata wouldn’t abide by it, though, if it was a costume. That would never last; the man might indulge in the illusion for a tryst or two, but the spell would break. Lupin knew that the fight the man put up against cutting out his heart would be gone if Lupin was the one who held the scalpel, cutting him open between kisses, but he had no desire to be the one that killed Zenigata Koichi as he was right in this moment, and left only the Inspector’s hunger for the hunt.

“I want to,” he said, and watched Zenigata teeter a little, suddenly off balance. The words had taken him unaware. “I really do.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“It-- it’s strange, I think. To be offered a gift, instead of needing to steal it.” Lupin reached out, running his hand over the length of Zenigata’s arm. He marveled at the wiry, thick hair that ran from wrist to elbow, the curve of muscle he knew could toss him about like a ragdoll if Zenigata chose to do so.

Zenigata opened up for him, more and more, the closer he got. It lasted right until Lupin had his arms sliding under Zenigata’s, encircling his waist. Zenigata put his arms over Lupin’s narrower shoulders. Lupin was barely broad enough to support them.

“Is it so hard to ask for something?” Zenigata asked.

“You have no idea,” Lupin assured him as he leaned in. He was falling, now, right into his place into the big man’s arms. “Accepting something means dealing with the conditions a gift comes with. Stealing is far less complicated.”

“Want. Take. Have.” Zenigata’s hands flexed at his hips, taming his own greed. “Is that it?”

“Yes!” Lupin flashed his teeth in a grin, but it softened a moment later. “But you can’t do that with people.”

“You can if you’re heartless,” Zenigata said, looking down into his lover’s face with open adoration writ large in his big eyes, taking in all of Lupin and honoring every part of him. “But you’ve never lacked heart, Lupin.”

“Thanks.” It wasn’t a small thing to hear that from Zenigata. He had chosen death over a heartless life. He could have gone on living and not caring about the cost. But he hadn’t. He had stayed true to himself, even as he was suffocating in Lupin’s arms. The only person who could take Zenigata’s heart was Lupin himself, and he had lost any desire to do so. He wanted it beating and thriving in the man’s chest, with all the love it had to give.

“You know, the priest told me there was no way a thief could have been cursed by their vengeful kami,” Zenigata told him. He’d lifted his hand, and Lupin rested his head back against it. “That there was no yearning. No hope. Thieves did not have to know what that was like -- they took what they wanted, if they wanted it at all.”

“That’s a crock of shit,” Lupin replied, chipper and full of edges. “We long! We want! We always want. That’s the problem.”

“What do you want, then?” Zenigata asked.

“You,” Lupin said, going up on his tip-toes. Damn it was hard to love a man six inches taller than he was. “Please.” 

Zenigata dipped down to kiss him; Lupin held to him loosely, but Zenigata let his arm cradle Lupin’s neck, while his other hand slid down to catch him at his side. Then he bent, letting Lupin’s weight fall back in his grip, and held him safe above the floor.

So this was what it was like to be dip-kissed. For real, not for play, or for a scam, or anything else. But dipped in a pair of brawny, supportive arms that would certainly never let him come to harm. 

When Zenigata brought him up for air, mouth damp and breath gone hot, Lupin found himself giggling. “You kiss by the book!”

“You know that’s meant to be something of an insult,” Zenigata said, as he cupped Lupin’s face in his palm. “That Romeo was formulaic, instead of passionate. Like he didn’t know how to properly love, he’d been play-acting with other women before his Juliet.”

“I never took you for a Shakespeare buff,” Lupin said, turning his head to kiss the calluses of Zenigata’s hand.

“You can blame Kurosawa Akira for that,” Zenigata said with a grin, though he ducked his head. Lupin wondered if he was shy about his more academic interests - he had many, but he can’t have ever imagined that any of his men knew that their superior had memorized _Romeo and Juliet._ “I loved _‘Ran’_ , and that led me to King Lear, and it spiraled out from there.” 

“You know, I remember when I wherefore’d you, back in that operahouse, for that tiara heist -- you had a _whyfore_ waiting, right there on your lips,” Lupin said, nuzzling into his palm. That had been so long ago; he was still in green, and Oscar had still been alive. Zenigata had shot to kill back then, and so had he. Luckily, they always seemed to miss. “How long were you lusting after me, Zenigata-keibu?”

“Too long,” Zenigata said, and dipped to pick him up. Lupin kicked his feet in glee as the big man carried him away from the kitchen. “Longer than I even realized.”

Zenigata lived in a two bedroom apartment. He’d gotten an upgrade from the one-bedroom affair once Ami had come under his guardianship legally, as had been required by the French government. The whole thing had involved finagling and some deals that were probably underhanded, but the old man had a stake in making it happen, so it happened. He re-arranged his own life to fit her into it, at Lupin’s request.

Now, he was carrying Lupin to a bedroom with a low-set Western style bed. A packed desk dominated one side of the wall, and the closet was in the other. Caged between two was the little bed.

“We’re going to have to upgrade, you know,” Lupin said as Zenigata set him on the bed.

“Why’s that?” Zenigata asked, before he went for a drawer. 

“Because, _Romeo_ , if you’re going to bed your Juliet, you must know I am a delicate princess!” Lupin dissolved into laughter as Zenigata picked him up again and tossed him over his shoulder.

“Right, for that, we’re using the futon. Maybe the kitchen table.”

“We just ate there!”

“We can wash it off after,” Zenigata said, deep voiced and full of playfulness. There was the rival, there was the nemesis. He recognized the laughter, now; still less supervillain than normal, but that-- that was his Zenigata. That was _Pops._

Lupin wriggled his way down like a greased eel, sliding down Zenigata’s back in a shot, landing on his hands, and walking away on them, giggling the entire time. 

“No! I refuse! Soft bed, goddamn it,” Lupin said as he retook his feet, only to start pulling off his shoes. 

Zenigata came after him -- it wasn’t a big apartment, and it didn’t take long. Lupin was already unbuttoning his shirt. 

“Sit down, take a load off. Let me take care of you.”

“Thought you did that in the car,” Zenigata said.

“Oh, no that was taking care of _me,_ ” Lupin said, shaking his head as he draped his shirt over a dresser, followed by his undershirt. “Sorry, but that was all about scratching a three month long itch.”

Zenigata didn’t respond. Instead he reached out to trace the scar that nearly bisected Lupin’s chest from his right collar to his bottom left rib. There were older scars beneath it, burns and brands, each one a story he hadn’t yet told. 

Lupin caught Zenigata’s hand, and pressed a kiss to his wrist. “None of that. No history tonight, okay?” 

Zenigata did not pull his hand back. “But we are our history.”

“Ahh, don’t be like that!” Lupin chided, clucking his tongue. “Look at the rest of me instead. Don’t look at the hurts, look at all the places you get to _touch._ Think about the future, instead of the past.”

Hooking his thumbs into the edge of his shorts, Lupin pushed them down slow, stepping out of them while he kept his eye on Zenigata and his reactions. Fujiko had been right, he realized: Zenigata blushed like a school boy, even after he’d had raunchy car sex with a man just the other day. His long eyelashes framed wide eyes, the realization that he didn’t have to bury his wants under layers and layers of denial and primness bringing dawn to his face. Watching desire bloom over his cheeks was almost as fulfilling as touching him, knowing that he’d kindled the light that shone out through Zenigata’s gray eyes.

“Ahh, there’s the look of a hungry man. Didn’t I just feed you?” Lupin said, as he came up to cup that lantern jaw, gazing into those gray eyes he’d only really noticed months ago, on a coastal switchback road with Zenigata’s heart under his hands.

“You did,” Zenigata said. He let his hand settle slowly on Lupin’s bare hips, tracing the crests of them with his thumbs. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want more.”

“Greedy,” Lupin said, like it was a triumph.

“Like a thief,” Zenigata replied, flashing his teeth in a smile.

“Good. Hold on to that,” Lupin said, plucking at Zenigata’s buttons. “Be greedy with me.”

“I can try.” Zenigata rolled his shoulders as his shirt was unbuttoned, letting Lupin undress him carefully. Lupin treated him like he didn’t want to damage a gift that had been tightly wrapped, because that was exactly what Zenigata was.

Zenigata was already reaching for him once his shirt was off, leaning in for open mouthed kisses, taking his time to explore the way their mouths slotted together. He still tasted like pepper from the steak, a sharp counterpoint to the smoky mellowness of Lupin’s mouth. 

When Lupin broke away, Zenigata made a plaintive sound, soft and small from inside his deep chest, making Lupin tingle. He wanted to hear all those noises, each little sigh, cry and moan he could from the man. The mystery of ‘was Zenigata as loud in bed as he was on the chase’ had to be solved.

“Where are you going?” Zenigata said as Lupin stepped out of reach.

“I told you in the car,” Lupin said, slowly dropping to his knees, “I’m going to suck you off.”

Zenigata went red again as Lupin nudged his thighs apart, settling between them, but he made no move to stop him. Instead he leaned back and settled his weight on his hands. His eyes never left Lupin.

“There’s something you should know,” Lupin said to Zenigata as he undid his fly, easing out Zenigata’s cock. It was nearly ridiculous, and probably broke some records for weight and girth. Lupin knew he could handle it, though.

Zenigat’a brows furrowed as Lupin rolled the foreskin back from the head of his cock and kissed the tip. It was hot and thick in his hand, scalding his palm with the heat of arousal. 

“What? Now?” Zenigata asked as he looked down as Lupin stroked him. “You want to tell me now?”

“Oh, definitely now,” Lupin replied with an impish grin, before he favored the head of Zenigata’s cock with a roll of his tongue, flicking it at the v of his frenulum. Each kitten lick was pulling little noises out of Zenigata, but Lupin was going to wait until the moment was just right.

Zenigata’s next words came out strangled. “What is it, then?”

Lupin made sure he had Zenigata’s eyes meeting his own when he replied, “I don’t have a gag reflex.”

Zenigata's sudden gasp was worth the price of admission as Lupin opened his mouth wide and took Zenigata into it. This was the best hung man he’d been with in a while, and he wasn’t about to give up an opportunity to show off his skills. Lupin would bet the entire haul from his next theft that the man had never, ever been deep throated before. 

The payout was worth it: Zenigata made noises he hadn’t made in the car, one hand coming to the back of Lupin’s head, raking nails over his scalp as Lupin worked him from tip to base, lacking any sense of shame or shyness. 

Lupin didn’t want to miss a single thing that crossed Zenigata's face, so he kept his eyes up. He was sure he looked a sloppy mess-- spit-slick cock in his mouth, cheeks bulging and hollowing as he moved back and forth along that thick dick -- but he wanted to see Zenigata lose his mind in it. The man’s lust for life was big and loud, and the fuck in the Audi had told him that he approached sex with the same gusto once he broke past his feelings of shame and embraced indecency. 

Zenigata was there with his mouth open, eyes wide with his lashes aflutter. It was downright precious, seeing him look at Lupin with a sense of open pleasure and awe. But beneath that shock was something hotter, boiling up inside him. Desire was turning him red again. The sex flush was so goddamn cute, painting him crimson from forehead to chest, the shells of his ears and apples of his cheeks as bright as juicy cherries.

Lupin took him deep with his eyes on that flushed face, meeting Zenigata’s gaze. Rolling his tongue along the bottom of Zenigata’s cock, nose to the wiry short hairs, Lupin bet he was borderline obscene down between Zenigata’s thighs. Keeping those legs apart with his hands, he kneaded the flesh of them, fingertips seeking out nerve clusters to tease. 

“L--Lu--” The good inspector’s languages were blurring back down to Japanese, his L’s melting into R’s as he forgot the basics of all the languages he knew. He dissolved into random sounds, eyes rolling as he let his head fall back, breathing heavily. His hand was still a weight against the back of Lupin’s head, comforting but not pushing. He didn’t want to control the action, and Lupin was glad for it. He wanted the man to uncoil, fall apart -- to _rest_ and let Lupin take care of him.

Slowing down, Lupin dragged it out, and then dove in again. There was drool on his chin and pre-come in his mouth, mixing messily and spilling past his lip. Muscles were tensing under his hands. Zenigata was close; between all the body signals and the way Zenigata was starting to make noise, louder and louder, Lupin knew he was ready.

Lupin took him deeper, bobbing his head in shorter stretches, keeping as much of Zenigata as he could in his mouth, before he was finally rewarded with a sharp ‘ah!’ from his lover. He took Zenigata in one more time as he came, sucking him dry as he spasmed in his grip. When it had passed, Lupin eased the slowly softening cock from his mouth and swallowed. Then he coughed.

“Worth it!” Lupin said, hoarse from the exertion. He couldn’t take a cock that size, gag reflex or not, and not feel some effect afterwards. “Don’t--- don’t move, I gotta--” 

Lupin didn’t bother to try and explain anymore as he went to the bathroom sink and spat out what still clung to his mouth, rinsed, and then spat again. 

“Big guys always mean big loads,” Lupin happily reported as he came back to the bedroom. His own erection made walking around an apartment he wasn’t familiar with an exercise in caution; he wasn’t a big guy -- definitely not like Zenigata -- but he didn’t want to smack into an edge he wasn’t aware of. 

Zenigata was still laid out, flat on his back in his bed, legs still hanging over the edge, right as Lupin had left him.

“You okay, Pops?” Lupin asked as he sat down beside him, running a hand up Zenigata’s fuzzy chest. 

“I-- yes-- just gimme--”

“Take your time. We got all night,” Lupin replied, teasing one of Zenigata’s nipples with the pad of his thumb, coaxing a little whine from him.

“Do we?” Zenigata asked, as he slowly sat up. He began to slither out of his pants, wriggling awkwardly before he kicked his shoes off and then removed the rest of his clothing. 

“We do,” Lupin replied, looking down at the bronzed body laying out in the bed. He was so goddamn gorgeous, Lupin realized. But he slid his hand over his side, gripping briefly on the perfect set of lovehandles.

“You lost some of your chub,” Lupin said, before his lips turned down in a pout. “I liked those handles.”

“Oh no, being sick with lung flowers cost me a couple of pounds of fat along with the decay of my muscle,” Zenigata said, eyes rolling as he leaned back on the bed.

“I’m just saying, I liked it,” Lupin let his pout ease into a little moue instead. 

“I’m sure they’ll return after I eat enough fast food,” Zenigata drawled. They shifted and wriggled, climbing into bed together. Zenigata drew him close, and his big rough hand found Lupin’s cock in short order.

“You’re already leaking,” Zenigata murmured as he rolled to tangle more, nuzzling into his throat. He ran his thumb over Lupin’s cock, smearing the pre-come around the head. 

“What can I say, giving head is a turn on,” Lupin replied as he let his head fall back.

“Give me a little bit, and I’ll make it better for you,” Zenigata said.

Lupin almost told him that his refractory period was more like a suggestion than a hard number, but he didn’t want to get into how hot he ran, always hungry for more, right this second. Instead, Lupin just cupped the back of Zenigata’s head as he kissed along Lupin’s throat. 

Then the first bite happened, and Lupin arched and gasped. He could feel another in short order, accompanied by sucking kisses before Zenigata moved onward.

“God, you’re such a biter!” Lupin wasn’t complaining as he pulled Zenigata tighter to him. “Don’t fucking stop.”

“I won’t,” Zenigata said, alternating kisses and bites as he worked his way up to Lupin’s earlobe. Below the waistline, his hand stroked and twisted, coaxing low moans out of Lupin as the man kept him teetering -- each touch good, but not getting him anywhere, leaving him floating in a sort of bliss.

Zenigata twined with him, legs tangling with Lupin’s, holding him close. He was going to have another necklace of bites, he realized, and he couldn’t even regret it. He’d need high collar shirts and makeup tomorrow, but the sting and throb in his skin was worth it.

“Gonna be your fucking chewtoy,” Lupin giggled at the thought. “Shoulda known.”

Zenigata snaked his way further down, teeth scraping one of Lupin’s nipples before he bit again and again. Unlike Zenigata, Lupin was happy to direct his attention to where he wanted to feel those teeth. Encouragement and guidance only made Zenigata more eager, before he followed the insistent nudging and worked further down. He bit over the crest of Lupin’s hip, and then down to his thighs. 

Zenigata skipped attention to Lupin’s cock all together, placing sucking kisses over his thighs as he stroked him, but that was basically enough. By the time Zenigata had left his third bruise on Lupin’s thigh, the thief fisted his hands in the sheets and gave a wailing cry, finally climaxing. He bucked and pulsed in Zenigata’s hand, beyond the ability to care about where the spatter of come fell on his belly.

Zenigata pumped him though it, and only once Lupin had come down, did he get up from the bed and grab a washcloth, getting it damp with warm water. He tidied Lupin up with one sweep of it over his belly, and then put it on his nightstand.

“I’m sure we’ll need that again tonight,” Zenigata said, as he slid into bed, and immediately became the big spoon, tugging Lupin to his chest.

“Oh yeah. I, uh. Run hot.”

Zenigata’s brows lifted, before he leaned in a little closer. “Define ‘run hot’.”

Lupin giggled, forgetting himself in the moment of bliss. “I mean, most guys gotta wait for a while! Give the tank some time to refill. Fifteen minutes, you know. Maybe more, maybe less. I’ll be back up way faster than that. A refractory period is more like a suggestion my dick has chosen to ignore.”

Zenigata laughed with him this time, nuzzling the back of Lupin's head. “Duly noted. I’m the average man, I need some rest between rounds.” 

“No, that’s fine. That’s totally fine,” Lupin said, before he fell quiet, soaking up the warmth of his lover. This was a good place to be, he decided. Tucked in against Zenigata’s broad chest. 

“Is it-- is it okay that I didn’t-- mm, blow you back?” Zenigata asked as Lupin’s post climax tingle slowly faded into a dull, pleasant afterglow.

“Uh, I mean, I still came, that’s not a big deal. Not a fan of dick in your mouth?” Lupin asked, glancing back at him.

“Oh, no, not that at all. I just -- I’m not a fan of having my breathing obstructed, is all,” Zenigata said quietly, the sticky sound of shame starting to make him mumble. “I do have a gag reflex. One that’s.. A bit sensitive right now.”

Lupin blinked back to the now, body still enjoying the burn but his mind suddenly alert. There were a lot of reasons that a man might not want to have his gag reflex tested, and ‘coughing up lung flowers’ was definitely one of them. 

Lupin rolled over to cuddle closer. “Oh, Pops, don’t worry about it! There are plenty of things we can get up to without a blowjob. I’m more worried about all the teeth marks. I’m not gonna be able to sit without remembering where you were!” 

Lupin was rewarded for his quick thinking with Zenigata’s laugh. It was warm, chasing out the winter cold edge of anxiousness before it could really grip either of them. “Good. I hope that means you’ll remember what we were doing for the next couple of days. “

“Oh, no doubt, Pops,” Lupin relaxed into him, warm and content. Big guys were the absolute best -- you felt safe in those arms, plenty to lean against, lots to love and touch. He sank against Zenigata, arm slung about his middle, and all but purred like a cat in a beam of sunlight.

“Ne, Lupin…” Zenigata’s voice was still warm with contentment when he finally broke their comfortable silence. “Are you going to call me Koichi again?”

Lupin was quiet for a time, thinking about that name, and how it had felt in his mouth. Unfamiliar, but… not wrong. “I hadn’t thought about it, really. Why do you ask?”

“The last two times, you-- you’d never used my name before, and… it shouldn’t be that way,” Zenigata said, fighting the urge to mumble again with carefully pronounced words. “I hope you knew it before you got into my notes--”

Lupin sputtered a little, trying not to sound indignant. “I did, I swear!”

“--but the first time you were looking to cajole me, and the second time, you did it in anger.” Zenigata said with all seriousness. His mouth was a line, but he wasn’t mad or hurt. Just very solemn. “I don’t… I don’t want it to be that way, Lupin. Like it’s a lash or a prod. If you use it, I want it to be because you love me, not because you want something from me.”

“I won’t, then,” Lupin said, and it was a simple enough promise to make. That name was for private moments, good friends, lovers. “Can I use it here? Would you like that?”

Zenigata turned pink again, mumbling as he turned his face toward the pillow. That was likely a yes, but Lupin was quickly learning that while Lupin could be a thief, with wanting, taking and having, Zenigata was bound by a thousand different rules and regulations. Asking for what he wanted had to be scrutinized, like some sort of expense report for his journeys all over the world. He wanted, but it had to be accounted for. _Allowed._

“Ze-ni-ga-ta….” Lupin carefully said each syllable, watching the blush deepen and the tops of Zenigata’s ears turn scarlet. “Ko-i-chi. Don’t hide from me. Let me see your cute red face!”

Zenigata rolled back, till he was flat on the bed, one arm thrown over his face. He was smiling, but he was grimacing too, like joy and embarrassment were waging war for control of his mouth. His heart wanted to paint him with two feelings and only really just muddled it up instead. 

“Did you like that?” Lupin asked, as he snaked a hand down his thigh and found his lover’s cock, and Zenigata only groaned in response. He was getting hard again, all the cuddling and now gently said sweetness warming him up again. “Koichi?”

Lupin took to straddling his legs, and slid his hands up over the big man’s pecs again, fondling shamelessly, before he teased Zenigata’s nipples. When a tweak got him to gasp and arch, he did it again.

Excitement thrummed through Zenigata like vibration through a plucked chord, and Lupin was more than ready to play Faster Pussycat’s _‘Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way’_ if Zenigata would let him… but not now. No, he’d figure that out later. When he wasn’t right here making the old man writhe beneath him, he’d have to find some other tune to strum out before he worked him up to the kinky stuff.

Once he was sure he’d left Zenigata’s nipples aching and puffy, he realized his mistake: the gig bag he’d brought -- ever hopeful about how the night should end -- was still in the other half of the apartment. 

“Fuck!” Lupin put his palms flat on his chest, and then hoisted himself up. Zenigata made a sound caught somewhere between disgruntled and bewildered, propping himself on his arms as Lupin shimmied himself out of the bed.

“Where are you--”

“Hold on, hold on!” Lupin took his short trip to the kitchen and back, where he had his messenger bag in hand. There were condoms and lubricant and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs that had been grabbed as a joke and forgotten about completely. He left them in the bag, and got the other two, more necessary things. 

Zenigata took the lube out of his hands before he could protest, and was already working it onto his hands before he could thank him, either. He swiped a little lube from Zenigata’s fingers, dabbed it inside the condom, and then rolled it down over the older man’s cock. 

“I always knew you were after my ass,” Lupin said even as Zenigata pulled him back down, condom no longer all that important. Lupin let Zenigata hoist one of his legs up over Zenigata’s hip, spreading him open at an angle. Then Zenigata slid his hand down between them.

“Now I’ve got it,” Zenigata replied, before he kissed Lupin, sliding a thick digit past well-mastered muscle at the same time his tongue swiped through Lupin’s mouth. Lupin shivered between the two sensations, rapidly getting dizzy with pleasure. 

Zenigata took his time, though he didn’t really need to. Lupin was as physical as they came, with a mastery of his body far beyond the expectations of most. He was fast, flexible, tougher than he looked, had more stamina than he let on, and was stronger than many realized until he was carting off with heavy valuables. One finger went in easy, two met little resistance. By the time he had three, Lupin was starting to whine impatiently.

“I’m ready, I’m ready, for fuck’s sake, Pops--”

Zenigata kisses his lips, a quick affectionate peck. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“You can’t, you won’t!” Lupin promised, trying to angle his hips to get Zenigata’s fingers to where he wanted them. “C’mon, c’mon, c’moo--oooh!”

Sparks dazzled Lupin for a moment as something electric raced through his belly and shot out through his limbs. Once it had passed, he relaxed with a stupid grin on his monkey-lipped face. Ah, there was the bliss. “That’s the ticket!”

“Ah, is that where I need to be?” Zenigata asked as he pressed his fingers to the same place again, and Lupin felt the sparks light up his belly again. 

“Ffffffffuck yeah, oh thank god, you found it--” Lupin was starting to babble. “I knew you’d be good at this. Too thorough not to be! How many cavity searches have you done, Pops?”

“Ha, ha! Calm down, calm--” Zenigata didn’t get to finish his cajoling or his laughter as Lupin grabbed his hair and pulled him in for a rough kiss. “Piece of work you are! Cavity searches? For fuck’s sake, Lupin.”

It became something of a struggle in short order: Lupin tried to push Zenigata back, only to find out he was impossible to move. Zenigata wanted to roll him, but that was hard at their current position.

When he pulled back and left Lupin empty, Zenigata said, “Stop wriggling. How can I fuck you if you won’t stop wriggling?”

“Wanna be on top!” Lupin said, going bratty and putting up a pout for show.

“Why?” Zenigata asked.

Lupin batted some eyelashes, trying to play at being coy. “Because then I can see you!” 

Zenigata’s brows went up, but then he grinned -- feral and hungry, exactly what Lupin was looking for. 

“What if I said I want to fuck you into the mattress and feel you write your name down my back with your nails?” Zenigata rumbled in his ear before he nipped the lobe. 

“Oh-ho! You drive a hard fuckin’ bargain, inspector!” Lupin said as he obligingly rolled back. “Now drive the other hard thing into me.”

Zenigata’s laughter was a treasure when it was given. Lupin wanted to hear it more. “You are the worst at dirty talk, you know?”

“I’m kind of shocked you _are_ good at it,” Lupin, watching Zenigata reposition on the bed. He kept himself propped on his arms, watching Zenigata’s movement; that broad frame and that thick cock held his total attention. He might’ve drooled, just a little bit.

“Rude!” Zenigata exclaimed, though he was still laughing. “What do rude boys get?”

“I don’t know?” Lupin laughed, as he reached for Zenigata again, only to get pushed back with a hand as wide as a spade. “What do we get? Is it dicked down? Please tell me it’s dicked down.”

Zenigata put his weight forward, holding Lupin down with the press of his body. He stayed propped up on one arm, his other hand under Lupin’s hips, tilting him. 

He pushed in slow and deep, giving a groan as he made sure to control his strength, shuddering once. Lupin’s body was as greedy as the rest of him; he took him deep, hooking his ankles over the small of Zenigata’s back, throwing his arms around him.

Then Zenigata drew back, taking his time with it; the rushed fucking in the car was absent-- Zenigata was deliberate, methodical, maddening, like he planned each thrust to be as devastating as possible. 

Lupin looked up into his face, to those large, guileless eyes - so bright and so fierce in this moment, so stupidly in love that Lupin almost lost himself right there. He grabbed Zenigata tighter, digging in his nails like Zenigata had talked about. He got a hiss of pleasure and a strong thrust for it.

Lupin let him control it all; depth and speed, taking Lupin apart as Zenigata pleased him in any way he could. His free hand moved across Lupin’s body-- flicking a nipple, reaching between them to stroke Lupin’s flushed and leaking cock. He wanted whatever Zenigata would give him, wanted to see how Zenigata would tell him _I love you_ with every action, every touch.

There was something transcendent about getting in bed with someone you loved, about knowing they were touching you because you mattered to them, that everything they did was because they wanted their beloved to be happy. Lupin didn’t try to convince every lover that they were his everything, but Zenigata certainly made him feel like he was the whole of the world. 

Japanese forgotten, Lupin returned to his grandfather’s french; they were cliches, but they were true, too. As he sighed, _ah, mon tresor,_ he heard Zenigata’s voice hitch in his throat. _Koichi_ came off his lips now, easily, as they tested the bedsprings and their neighbor’s patience with their lovemaking.

Lupin crested over his peak first with a sob, but Zenigata did not stop. He fucked him through it, leaving Lupin mewling as his overstimulated body thrummed with pleasure that kept pushing, demanding something he couldn’t give it right now, the valley of post-climax pleasure swallowing it all up.

When Zenigata finally finished inside him, they lay there joined, sweaty and panting, before they finally untangled. Zenigata eased his condom off, tied it, and let it hit the trash bin before he reached for Lupin again.

“Stay?” Zenigata murmured against Lupin’s damp hair.

“I planned on it, Pops,” Lupin murmured, nuzzling into his lover’s well muscled chest and finding safety in the cage of Zenigata’s arms. “Got no place to run.”

“No place to hide,” echoed Zengiata.

No, there were still places to hide. Right in plain sight, even. But Lupin didn’t correct him. He just let the warm and tingly afterglow drag him down into deep, restful sleep.

“Love you,” Zenigata said once Lupin was tucked neatly under his chin.

“Love you too,” Lupin said, quietly awed that he could say it and have it be true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "But Raven, this was supposed to be the last chapter, and then an epilogue."
> 
> Yeah, I know! But guess what - it didn't work out that way. There was still one more thing that had to be resolved and the chapters need to hammer out a little differently. But the next chapter is definitely the last, and the epilogue is 100% complete... and the last chapter, mostly so. So, don't worry! You might even get it before the end of August...


	9. The Start of Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are all about love, revelation, compromise, and understanding. It's not easy, but if you're willing to do the work, it's worth it.

In Zenigata’s dreams he could not breathe. It was still something that haunted him -- dreams of flowers, of feeling his body torn apart, invaded by an inhuman force. Sometimes it came with a woman who sneered, or raged, or wept. Some days it was just about the suffocation he felt. Other days, he could see the roots again, working their way through his lungs and punching holes in his body, pulling him under the earth, camellias springing from his flesh, their petals the color of his blood.

Tonight, it was choking roots, the seizing of his lungs, the taste of death on his tongue. He sat bolt upright, panting for air, before he slid from the bed to go straight to the window to open it up. The sound of the Lyon nightlife came in-- in the distance, cars were still running, lights were still on. It was a beautiful city, even if the area he lived in wasn’t particularly scenic, but he didn’t care what he was looking at right now. 

All he cared about right now was the air. Sucking in gulps of it, trying to moderate himself so he didn’t start to hyperventilate. He searched for his phone and earbud case, nearly knocking them off the dresser.

Lupin was awake and saying something sleepily, but Zenigata had put in an earbud and thumbed to the right app. It was for ‘mindful breathing’, a suggestion from Yata after the first time he’d woken him during their hotel hops back to Lyon. He had to count with the app, breathing in time with it. Four in, six out. It was harder than it sounded when his panic centered on breathing itself.

It took a few minutes, but he finally mastered his breathing. When the panic passed, he popped the earbud out, and set it and the phone on his desk. His mind clear, he looked at the bed.

Lupin sat at the edge of it, having grabbed his boxers and pulled them on as if he might need to dress in a hurry to help. 

“You-- you okay?” Lupin asked, keeping his voice soft.

“Mmm.” Zenigata wasn’t sure how to say ‘yes and no,’ so just shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Fuck sorry, man,” Lupin got up from the bed, coming closer. Zenigata gave him the clear with open arms and Lupin slipped right into them. “You've been having panic attacks?”

“It started a couple of weeks back. Not long after I got out of the hospital,” Zenigata admitted as they stood there a moment, chest to chest. The rapid tattoo of his heart was fading in times with Lupin’s own nervous beat. “I mean, it makes sense. A month of intense illness, and… well, you said the damned thing had… had a  _ face. _ And I dream about her still, sometimes.”

Lupin stayed beside him, soothingly stroking his back, the motion of his hand lulling him back into his body, calming his jangling nerves. He was here, he was alive, his lungs were clear. Zenigata slung his arm around him, and nestled him closer. 

“I didn’t want to mention, but-- after I left, I dreamed about you,” Lupin began quietly, as he tugged them back toward the bed to sit. Zenigata willingly followed. “I don’t dream.”

“I know,” said Zenigata, tilting his head, brows furrowed. “But you did this time? Like -- a dream? Lay down, hallucinate something, remember it upon waking?”

“Yeah, and as experiences go, I’ll take a pass on it.’ Lupin shivered a little against him, pulling in closer. “I didn’t… know what to think, and waking up was unpleasant.”

“So what happened?” Zenigata asked, pulling his arms tighter, setting up Lupin in the cell of his grip, protecting and possessing him all at once.

Lupin’s grin revived, crooked and amused, but the memories of those tortured hours of sleep wiped it off his face. “It was -- just flowers. I had fallen asleep alone in the bed, and -- you were there, but you were made of-- well. You weren’t you.”

“I can guess,” Zenigata said, and it was his turn to shiver.

“I woke up and I wondered if, when we went back, if your body would be like that. Then I realized things were missing, and came looking,” Lupin explained. “When you-- when it-- her-- when you were free of the curse, I finally got it.”

“What was it?” Zenigata asked, tugging Lupin even closer.

“She wanted me to know that she’d be all that was left of you,” Lupin said, leaning his head on Zenigata’s shoulder. His voice was soft, with an intensity that only spoke to the terror they had shared down below Tokyo. “That there wouldn’t even be remains to cremate. But it got me thinking, later, after you survived.”

“What could come of that, then?” Zenigata tugged him back until they were against the pillows again. 

“That I wanted to know all of you,” Lupin said, and then rushed to add: “And you know me, too. Not just--the stuff that happens on the jobs, you know. But the other stuff. The stuff that’s -- secret, or important, or special. But it means...”

“The secrets of  Arsène  Lupin III?” Zenigata said as he let Lupin lay back against his chest. “Quite a treasure you’re offering up.”

“You sure about that?” Lupin asked, and the question hung in the air between them for a moment. Knowing the secrets of Lupin would change him, certainly. Less legend, more man. Zenigata has chased a myth for all these years. Truth could alter things forever. “Seeing behind the curtain takes the magic away.” 

Zenigata said “yes,” without a second thought.

Lupin pushed away from before he straddled Zenigata’s hips, before he settled back in, hands pressed to Zenigata’s belly. He shifted his weight again, and then settled once more. 

“Give me your hands,” he said.

Zenigata obeyed him, looking down to his huge shovel hands in Lupin’s, with his long nimble fingers. Then Lupin lifted them and guided them to his chest. 

“Press,” Lupin said.

Zenigata obeyed, fingertips applied, watching the skin give as skin did, leaving indentations where he pressed. 

“Harder.”

Zenigata slid a hand around to Lupin’s back, holding him still over his lap. He pressed, again and again, and finally realized the smooth skin was covering something else, something strangely lumpy. He tilted his head. It was not what he expected.

“Lupin?” he looked up into his lover’s face, and found Lupin’s deep hazel eyes. They were brown but flecked with green and gold, like impurities in uncut gems. He guided his hands again, to the edge of something that hugged Lupin’s body like a second skin -- truly, ilke it was a part of him. But there were edges, seams, and he peeled it away under the guidance of the thief.

The scar that bisected his chest remained, but there was more still beyond that, things he had never seen before. The hair that dusted Lupin’s chest was more scraggly here, interrupted over and over again by scars. Pieces of him flaked away the more he pulled, showing lines in his throat where a garotte had nearly taken his life, puckers of twenty-year old bullet wounds.

“Further, Koichi. All the way up,” Lupin nudged his hands upward, leading Zenigata to more seams, the tiniest secret places where skin with the right amount of pressure gave way under his hands.

It was the most powerful undressing he’d ever done - taking Lupin past clothing, past his skin, down to a layer below that never directly felt the kiss of sun or the claws of the winter winds. A hairpiece was unhooked from tiny latches set into Lupin’s skin, and the whole mess came off.

When Zenigata was done, with pieces of Lupin laying on the bed like some sort of macabre flayed skin suit, he looked at his lover and the ravages both time and the dangerous occupation he held had dealt him. 

By all estimates, Zenigata had placed Lupin in his late thirties to early forties. He himself was forty seven, inching onward toward turning forty eight this year. Lupin’s youthful countenance was one crafted from makeup and spirit gum, and Zenigata knew that long before he had been brought to this moment, where he cupped Lupin’s slightly damp face in his hands, running his thumb along a scar that raced down his temple and split like branching lightning over his cheek, pulling up one corner of his mouth.

The face was the same general shape and set as the one he was familiar with. There was more Japanese to him here, in the set of his nose, the shape of his eyes. But his hair was graying at the temples in great streaks over his ears -- where it wasn’t interrupted by scar tissue, creating odd waves and cowlicks. 

“Hello, Lupin,” Zenigata said, before he gently kissed lips he’d never seen before.

“Heya, Pops,” Lupin murmured against his mouth.

“Did you think this would change anything?” Zenigata said, dotting his face with kisses. “That I’d be upset?”

“I didn’t know,” Lupin admitted. It was his turn to be uncertain, to have hope in his voice, along with a little bit of quaver. “It-- a handful of people know. Fujiko. Ami.”

“Not Jigen?” That was strange, though Zenigata. He pulled back, looking the man in his face again. 

“Do you think he could have handled it?” Lupin asked him quietly. He didn’t flinch away from his gaze, didn’t recoil from Zenigata’s open face. He was calm for having shed his skin for an older, more rumpled version of himself, instead of a younger, fresher Lupin. “Seeing the truth? How much this costs?”

“He’d lay down his life for you, Lupin. He’s put everything on the line,” Zenigata said before he kissed the curling corner of Lupin’s mouth. “You could be a lizard in a person suit and he’d still love you.”

Lupin laughed at that, and the pall over them cracked and broke. Lupin shook with it in Zenigata’s hands, but even after the laughter ended, he was still trembling. “No lizards here. Just a naughty monkey!”

Zenigata scooped him up in one arm, and carefully grabbed the shed skin and put it on the dresser with his free hand. Then he climbed back into bed with his truly naked lover, and cuddled him close. Lupin’s laughter faded, leaving a gasp in its place.

“So this is the secret of Lupin III?” Zenigata finally asked him, once it felt safe to address here, wrapped up in each other’s arms.

“One of them,” Lupin said, resting his head on Zenigata’s chest. 

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Zenigata asked, stroking comforting circles across Lupin’s back, counting scar after scar. He hoped his steady heartbeat was a comfort.

“Later,” Lupin said, a little quick, his grip tightening, like he might make Zenigata’s skin a part of his own. “Later. When I’m not like this.”

When he was safe again, wrapped in a false face and a brightly colored sports jacket. Zenigata understood that need. There was a power in identity, in persona played for strength. Jigen wasn’t Jigen without his hat, Goemon felt lost without Zantetsuken in his hands, and Fujiko was as much a chameleon as she was a woman. Even Zenigata felt better with his duster and hat, too, and the weight of handcuffs in his pockets.

Lupin III couldn’t be really hurt, couldn’t be truly killed - he was a legend. But legends don’t fall in love, and legends don’t grow old with you. This Lupin, whipcord wiry muscle under the false flesh, body etched with the coin he’d paid for being a living legend, he was growing old, same as Zenigata.

“I love you,” Zenigata murmured.

“I know,” Lupin said. The bare skin against his hands was shouting  _ I love you _ to every other part of him that Lupin reached. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

“I thought you said losing me wouldn’t cripple you,” Zenigata said quietly. Sunlight was starting to glimmer on the horizon, bird song from the hardy flocks that still survived in Lyon lifting in their morning greetings. 

“It wouldn’t,” Lupin repeats. “But what doesn’t kill me makes me stranger, right?”

“I suppose that’s true,” Zenigata agreed, pressing a palm flat to Lupin’s back, tugging him tighter against his chest. “I love you, strange or not.”

“Good,” Lupin said, nuzzling in, hiding his face against the slowly brightening day. “Because you’re stuck with me, old man.”

Zenigata tugged him tight to his frame, holding him tighter still. If he could communicate with every piece of him, from top of his head to the very tips of his toes, he wanted Lupin to know that he was in this for the long haul.

He always had been.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Lupin,” Zenigata said, kissing the man’s hair. 

They lingered there for a while in the quiet, tracking the way the sun brightened the walls, making shadows move across them both. The quiet contentment here was a treasure; he hadn’t had anything like this in years. Nothing this kind, nothing so peaceful. They didn’t need to talk, comfortable in the silence of the truth. This was the future happening right now, and it looked bright as the sun came up.

When the chirp of the alarm told them to wake up, Zenigata tapped it off, and then nuzzled Lupin’s hair.

“You bring the fixings for breakfast, last night?”

“I mean, I was aiming at making your breakfast in the morning, Pops,” Lupin said, before he stretched out, spine popping once or twice. “Go shower, I’ll start on breakfast.”

Zenigata knew a polite ‘shove off’ when he heard it. Zenigata got out of his bed, letting Lupin shoo him off so he could cobble himself back together from all the strange pieces of himself.

When the hot spray of the shower hit his back he hissed in pleasure-pain, eyes closing. He tried to glance back, but he was certain there were going to be furrows in his skin. He  _ had _ said he wanted Lupin to cling to him, and the man had obliged him. He couldn’t quite see the scratches, but he could feel that they were there.

Zenigata was quick about his routine, but didn’t leap to getting dressed immediately. When he came out of the shower, he saw Lupin -- and the pieces of him they’d peeled away hours before -- had vanished from the bedroom. 

He hadn’t gone far, though. Once Zenigata had his sweat pants on, for lack of giving a damn about getting ready too quickly, he found Lupin at the stove with bacon and eggs already sizzling in a pan.

He had not gotten dressed. At least, not in his own clothes. He was currently drowning in one of Zengiata’s dress shirts that had only been half buttoned up, sleeves pushed up over his wrists. 

“You look good like that,” Zenigata said as he checked the bubbling coffee percolator. 

“I know,” Lupin said, casting a fresh-faced glance over his shoulder. Zenigata leaned over and kissed him quickly, then asked, “Do you want me to take over while you shower?”

“And miss flouncing around sexily in your shirt, barefoot-but-not-pregnant?” Lupin asked, grinning. He threw his arms around Zenigata in a sudden rush dragging him down for a firmer kiss. “Maaaaybe.”

Zenigata hissed against his mouth, “Careful there-- you’re gonna smudge your signature.”

“What? Oh!” Lupin turned Zenigata around, and then chortled with delight. Zenigata felt the pads of Lupin’s fingers tracing just to the left of a scratch. Lupin let out a low whistle, and then said, “Well, you did ask for me to write my name… hoo boy, got you good.”

“You did, yes,” Zenigata confirmed. The sting had dulled to a strangely pleasant burn, but he knew he must look a bit of a mess.

“Next time I’m riding that dick like I stole it, Pops,” Lupin said, waggling a finger, but his smile was curled up in undeniable pride. He’d left his mark on Zenigata -- just like Zenigata had wanted it. “But yeah, okay, I’ll shower. Take over and plate up. Toast’s in the toaster, and I’ll be out in two shakes.”

Zenigata watched him go, and then went to tending the eggs. Things were quickly wrapped, and soon the simple morning fare was on plates and on table. “Ne, Lupin! How do you take your coffee?”

The doorbell rang before he got an answer. Zenigata went to peek through the peephole and saw Yata waited on the other side

Zenigata exhaled a soft  _ fuck _ under his breath, and then opened the door. “Yata-kun! I didn’t realize you were coming by.”

“I called but you didn’t pick up. I was coming by since I was in the area and grabbed some of the chocolate filled croissants--”

“You were coming to check on me again, Yata-kun, I know.” He smiled slightly. “But I’m just about to sit down to breakfast.”

Just then, the bathroom door cracked open and Lupin’s voice came out from behind it: “I like plenty of cream, Pops! You should have figured that out after last night!  _ Ghu-hu-hu! _ ”

Yata and Zenigata froze in the doorway. Yata’s gaze was fixed near the bathroom door, just past Zenigata’s shoulder, and Zenigata had abruptly found the doorframe fascinating. They hung there in the terrible plateau of awkwardness for a moment, before Lupin came out of the bathroom completely, buttoning up his shirt. 

Across the room, their eyes met. Lupin blinked, and then smiled, waving once -- freshly showered and still radiating that fresh fucked afterglow even after a good night’s sleep. 

“You joining us for breakfast, Yata?” he asked as if this were not the most surreal thing to ever happen to Zenigata’s assistant.

Yata finally looked up at Zenigata, eyes raking him from top to bottom as if he might read an explanation from Zenigata standing there as if everything was normal. Trying to comprehend the scene he’d been presented with, Yata kept staring. When he couldn’t understand, he leaned over and whispered, “You told me he broke the curse.”

“He did,” Zenigata said, watching Yata with a tension that knotted up his shoulders.

“But that doesn’t explain-- oh. You and him.  _ Oh. _ ” Realization crested over Yata like a wave, washing away shock and leaving him with an expression of acceptance, face softening in understanding. He was strangely serene afterwards, as if contemplating the idea that the reason Zenigata didn’t die is because he and notorious criminal Lupin III were stupidly in love with each other and being perfectly happy with it.

Then he just smiled, and extended the box of pastries. “Enjoy your morning. I’ll let the office know you might be late!”

Before Zenigata could answer, Yata was dashing for the stairs, waving merrily good bye. Zenigata watched him go, and then shut the door. Lupin had his hands in the box of donuts as soon as it was closed.

“He’s a good kid,” he said.

“He is,” Zenigata agreed, smiling down at the box, before he put it on his countertop. “A little weird, but good.”

“Glad you didn’t turn around while he was here,” Lupin said as he went to the dining table. “Your back looks like you went ten rounds with Catwoman.”

Zenigata followed, asking, “Who?”

“Nevermind,” Lupin said, before he took a big bite of his stolen pastry. He waved with his empty hand, steering Zenigata back to the table, the savory scent of bacon and eggs overpowering the sweetness of french pastries. “Not important, big guy. Let’s eat!”

It was the start of something good, he thought as they both tucked in, ready to refill after the last twenty four hours. As Lupin shamelessly ran his foot along the curve of Zenigata’s calf, he realized he could get used to it, too.

Hoping beyond hope, he wanted it to happen enough that he  _ could  _ get used to it. But he wasn’t alone; Lupin was smiling at him over breakfast with eyes like uncut gems, promising that he wanted it too. 

His little apartment in Lyon wasn’t pretty. There were no expensive gardens outside the window, there were no rich historical buildings on his block, and there were no frilly amenities making this anything more than a place to rest. But so long as he had Lupin here, Zenigata thought, it was still better than mansions or palaces, the beds of kings or god-priests. 

Lupin was home, and wherever he was, Zenigata was happy to be there.

***

“Good to see you back, inspector!” 

The sentiment had been repeated in a variety of ways over the last couple of weeks, but it felt good to hear regardless. Today was another round of exercises in the yard - he really wanted to remind them of teamwork and their paces, and Zenigata himself wanted to go out and tax his body in ways that didn’t involve a flexible thief or nails running down his back.

The team was waiting when he hit the locker room to change, as he fully intended to run with them, pushing them further and further. Loud enough not to need a bullhorn, they spent an hour running the Lupin Obstacle course in the yard. The team all collapsed to return to the locker room, trading off with showers and chatter, as Zenigata went over results.

It was when he was changing that he heard a low whistle. “Inspector Zenigata, did you-- you look like you wrestled a cougar!”

Zenigata straightened up; the sting had faded, but the marks definitely hadn’t. “I did not wrestle a cougar.”

“I mean, if she was older than you, she could be a cougar,” one of the other men laughed. “Congratulations, sir!”

Zenigata resisted the urge to roll his eyes; locker room talk was not something he engaged in, but it was always present. Still, the men started to murmur, pleased that their leader had, he supposed, ‘gotten some.’

“She must’ve been wild,” another said.

Zenigata bit his tongue, for a moment as the chatter ebbed and flowed, men talking as they were wont to do, wishing their wives and girlfriends were that enthusiastic. Yata and he exchanged looks for a moment, weighing the moment.

“You going to see her again, chief?” asked one of the more bold of his team.

“I hope to see him again, yes,” Zenigata said, and let that stand as it was.

Yata’s mouth dropped open, and then he shut it with a click of his teeth. He said nothing, and continued to dress.

The raucous sex talk dulled to a brief murmur for a moment, before one said, “Sorry, sir, we’ve just seen you date women, so we assumed!”

“It’s not a problem. I don’t date much, and it’s been sometime since a gentleman caught my eye,” Zenigata said smoothly. The subject had been broached, and they were still happy for him, if relatively confused. Yata was hardly the only gay man on the team. The women were in a whole different locker room, but they would have reacted in the same way, he supposed. “Now go to lunch, men, and then hit your respective desks. You all have case files to review and at least five of you have loan requests from another special division.”

“Of course sir! I hope it works out for you!” one said before they left. 

Murmurs continued as they went out the door. 

_ Hope that guy knew what he was getting into with the chief.  _ Another added,  _ Hope he was athletic, because Jigen Daisuke’s hardly the only guy who has a magnum in his pants. _

Zenigata rolled his eyes, and finished buttoning up his shirt. Yata had stayed behind.

“Sir,” Yata began, though he fumbled a bit for words. “Why did you--?”

“Out myself?” Zengiata asked, brows lifting. When Yata nodded, he continued. “My superiors found out about Henri and I years ago, so some of the brass know I’m-- flexible in regards to my partners, so…Why not just kill the rumor of some wild woman now?”

“Still, sir. I just-- worry.”

Zenigata’s brows knitted over his nose. There were several reasons Yata could be concerned, he just wasn’t sure which it was. “Yata, you’re gay and out on the team. Do you think they’ll have a hard time maintaining respect and cohesion?”

“Not at all,” Yata replied, shaking his head quickly. “You’re well respected in special divisions, sir. Nobody’s going to care who you sleep with, because you get the job done. I’m just worried about speculation about who your partner was.”

“For now, it was a one night stand, yeah?” Zenigata said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“A hell of a one night stand, sir,” Yata said, lips twitching as he contained a smile.

Zenigata gently cuffed him, mussing his hair and pushing him a little. “None of that from you, Yata-kun!”

“Of course not, sir,” Yata said, still smiling brightly. Then it faded a little. “Sir, I do have to ask, what--”

He never got to finish the question, because Zenigata’s phone buzzed in his suit coat pocket. 

“Just a moment.” he said, and took it out. There was an alert on his encrypted messenger app. There was only one person who reached out to him over that app.

He opened it, finding Lupin’s single text:  _ So when are you going to get me a juicy target? We need to go over it, and work out the ground rules for this ‘partnership.’ Don’t keep me waiting! _

“Zenigata-keibu?”

“Oh, it’s -- nothing,” Zenigata said, awe at the request transforming to joyous glee, as a smile cut across his face. 

“Sir? Sir, you’re grinning,” Yata said as he pulled on his own jacket. “I’m going to assume that  _ wasn’t _ an encrypted dick pic.”

“Yata-kun!” Zenigata sputtered, eyes wide as he looked at his assistant. “It wasn’t!”

“It was a reasonable suspicion. You know how he is!” Yata said, still smiling. He was genuinely happy for Zenigata, giving him his sunny smile. 

“Still, don’t say it like that!” Zenigata said, before he sent a quick reply:  _ I’ve been back in the office four hours, give me some time! _

Pocketing his phone, Zenigata turned to Yata. “I need you to lunch with Lebeau today. See if you can find out about any tough cases he hasn’t cracked yet.”

“Sir?” Yata’s brows furrowed over his nose. 

“Bring me back anything you can find out,” Zenigata added, as he went over his appearance. “I want to know what his hardest projects are. Then, if you can, talk to Tsui down in narcotics, get the same info.”

“Why sir?”

“Well, every relationship is about compromise,” Zenigata said, looking away and trying not to turn pink. “This is part of mine.”

“...are you going to use Lupin as a wedge in these cases?” Yata’s finely arched brows went so far up his forehead they nearly merged with his hairline.

“Shh!” Zenigata grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Just do as I tell you, Yata-kun!”

Yata’s smile returned, and he gave a nod. “I’ll see what I can find out!”

“Good man! Now get to it!”

Once Yata was out of the room, Zenigata watched him go. His phone chimed again. 

Lupin had replied,  _ Can’t wait to see what you have to give me. _

Zenigata read the message twice. Then he checked the locker room again. Grateful he was alone, Zenigata undid his fly, snapped a shot, and sent his own dick pic off. A little reward for Lupin, since he was willing to play along with Zenigata’s idea.

Hot in the face and hoping he wasn’t blushing furiously, Zenigata headed back to his office to eat lunch. There was so much to do, and so much to prepare for.

***

They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of weeks when the end of the school year came and Ami was coming home to Lyon. Zenigata had driven up, ready to have some time to talk with her, and worrying about all the things that needed to be said. He didn’t know if Lupin had passed anything on, and he hadn’t gotten any emails or texts in weeks. She could either be busy with school work, or she could be mad at him. No way to tell until she was in his presence.

She came out in her school uniform, and came up the car, as Zenigata walked up to greet her. 

“Ami-chan,” he said as he reached out to put a hand to her shoulder. “Welcome to summer. I hope we can have a good time in Lyon.”

Ami made a little noncommittal noise as she was steered to the car. Zenigata was getting more tense now. She was taciturn and had difficulty communicating sometimes, but still, he expected a little more greeting.

“How were the classes?” Zenigata asked. “Did you like them?”

“How were your months in Japan?” Ami asked in return. “I don’t think you enjoyed them much.”

Zenigata deflated a little, catching a glance at her from the corner of his eye as they pulled down the long and winding road away from her boarding school. 

“So you know I got sick.”

“I know that you were a victim of a specific malicious curse, one that seems to root in legend. It’s not unknown - it's even a favorite of fanfiction writers as a motif for longing and denied feelings--”

“Ami, you’re talking about internet things I don’t understand,” Zengiata tried to steer her back to the important center of her frustration. “Yes, I was sick. How did you find out?”

“You didn’t communicate as frequently,” Ami said, and her voice dropped from the brief flash of irritation into a mechanical monotone. “So I hacked your phone.”

“Ami!” Zenigata sputtered. “We’ve talked about this. Boundaries, Ami.”

_ Please God, _ he sent up a prayer. Please don’t let her have cracked the encrypted texts back and forth between him and Lupin. There had been an excessive amount of horny content between shop talk and casework, and that was the last thing he needed her to see.

“Once I realized you were involved with Lupin -- congratulations, by the way -- I stopped,” Ami said, looking away, still staring out the window. “I knew you loved him.”

“Does that hurt your feelings, Ami-chan?” Zenigata asked. Both he and Lupin had discussed the aftereffects of her life as a trafficking victim. Used in child pornography, raped at a young age -- it left a mark. She confused the feelings of love and safety with Lupin as romantic and sexual love because that’s what she was familiar with. But one had to spend five minutes with her and her classmate Dolma, to realize that she had no sexual interest in men at all. Instead, she had a crush on a princess.

“No,” Ami said as she folded her hands in her lap. She still wouldn’t look at him. “I resolved to put aside my feelings for Lupin. They would not be reciprocated, and it would sully his image as a hero.”

Zenigata’s lips quirked upward. Whatever she needed to tell herself, he supposed. She’d figure it out in time - she was only fourteen, after all. 

“Alright. Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” Ami said. Her voice still hadn’t shifted from her monotone, one flat word stated after another. No inflection. It was like talking to the Underworld AI she’d coded for both information and false companionship.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Zenigata said, struggling. The car was a terrible place for this conversation. “I was afraid. Things were very hard and my mind was in a very bad place. I didn’t want to be yet another person who abandoned you, to tell you I was going to be gone and leave you alone.”

“I understand,” Ami replied, though the flatness she used said she didn’t understand at all.

This was going to be a very long drive indeed, Zenigata realized. Nothing but short, terse answers in an unemotional, unflinching voice. The silence was stifling; he didn’t know what to say and Ami wasn’t offering up her thoughts or feelings on the matter.

The hours of driving were miserable. They stopped for gas, and she didn’t get out of the car. She just looked at her phone a few times, tapping some app or another, and then resumed her position watching out the window as they drove off. 

By the time they reached Lyon, Zenigata was glad for the noise of the city just outside his window. He’d need to make lunch -- he’d make soba, he decided. She’d liked that, and cold soba salad was an excellent lunch on a hot summer day.

Ami remained silent all the way to the parking garage, all the way to the stairs of his apartment building. He expected her to stay silent all the way into lunch, but as soon as he opened the door he realized there was going to be no quiet at all.

“Welcome home!” Lupin said, in a frilly pink apron. 

Ami’s expression turned stormy, dimming Lupin’s sunshine smile. He faltered, hands dropping. “Ami-chan?”

“ _ Neither _ of you talked to me,” Ami said before Zenigata could even close the door behind them. “Both of you kept me in the dark. Now you’re going to play-- family? Sit at the table? Make small talk? Pretend you didn’t hide things from me?”

Zenigata hung his coat up and got cushions set around his Japanese style low-set dining table. “Let’s sit and talk, then.”

Lupin put lunch on the table -- ratatouille crepes filled with fresh summer vegetables, straight from some garden or farmer’s market. Despite the aroma wafting off the steaming savory crepes, Ami did not touch her meal. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”

“I was afraid,” Zenigata said, trying to corral his thoughts into something that could be communicated clearly.

“Of what?” Ami’s gaze burned like the sun, blistering and unforgiving.

“Of-- being just someone who left you behind. Failing another daughter. Facing it,” Zenigata admitted slowly. “I -- I didn’t tell Toshiko, either. She heard it from her mother.”

“I know how you found out,” Lupin said, brows lifting as if he might admonish her for whatever backdoor she’d used to access their phones. Then his expression softened, and he said, “Guess we’re still learning, too.”

“How can I trust you if you lie to me?”

Lupin opened his mouth for a response, but then shut it. He looked to Zenigata for a long moment, before he rolled his shoulders and put his elbows on the table, leaning forward.

“I didn’t set you up because I wanted to be a Dad, or have an heir, or anything like that,” Lupin said as he looked at Ami across the table from him. “I mean, I  _ know _ I’ve got kids. I even know one of them. But I’m not interested in training up a Lupin IV, and she already has family and friends to look up to, a role model for her own style of criminal. I wasn’t there, and I’m not who raised her. So, as far as I’m concerned Lupin III will be the last, and best, Lupin.”

Just like that, Zenigata’s attention snapped to Lupin. This was the first he’d ever heard of any of this. He knew about the suspicions surrounding Rebecca “Becky” Lambert, the daughter of a brief and intense partner of Lupin’s when he was a much younger man. But this was the first time Zenigata had ever heard him admit to having sired a child of his own. Then again, if he was going to admit it to anyone -- the two of them would be the ones he needed to come clean with. 

“What did you want?” Ami asked him. 

“I wanted to know you’d have things-- better,” Lupin said, waving one hand to try and encompass an already nebulous concept of what ‘better’ could look like. “You needed to have more than I did at your age. Better than what you got, because you had it  _ worse _ that I did as a kid.” 

Zenigata wanted to disagree. Wanted to say that being bred, trained, and branded like cattle to become a criminal heir was certainly no child’s ideal. Separated from his mother because she wasn’t  _ pure French _ . Zenigata’s life had been a plush life of clouds and daydreams compared to either of them. His father might’ve been harsh, but he wasn’t a damned monster.

Ami mulled it over in silence, before she looked at Zenigata now, gaze still hot. “What about you?”

“I just wanted you to be safe, and happy. You needed structure - I provided it. I didn’t entertain any ideas that you -- would think of me as a father, really.” Oscar’s picture was looking down at him from the shelf; Zenigata could feel his eyes, staring impassively out at the disappointing man he’d chosen to imprint on. “You needed someone. Lupin asked me to be that someone. So I was.”

“Do you love me at all?” Ami asked. It was impossible to tell what she was feeling, face held in the impassive mask she retreated to when upset. “Either of you?”

“Yes!” came out of both of their mouths in different tones: Lupin was confused, and Zenigata was urgent.

“I’m not going to say ‘of course we do’, because everybody at this table fucked up with family at one time or another,” Lupin said, gaze still on Ami. “I’m from a crime family, you lost your family, Zenigata… well, he can explain his own situation.”

“You can say it,” Zenigata said, relaxing slightly. At least it was out there. “I was a shitty father. I didn’t even know I had a grandson until my ex-wife told me he’d been born.”

“I mean I wasn’t going to use those words, because you’re not,” Lupin said, before he ran his hands through his hair. “But you know, your choice.”

“I think what Lupin is trying to say is,” Zenigata said, searching for words that wouldn’t make it sound even worse, “that we both are flawed, and we didn’t expect to be in these positions again. But we want to be here. Lupin hasn’t left you behind but he’s not trying to recast you in his image. I’m here for you, but I also know how easily it is to mess up.”

Ami folded her hands in her lap, fingers twitching. She probably wanted her phone, for whatever reason, but the rules of the table had been obeyed: telephones stayed off the table for meals. It was one of the rules: his house, his rules.

“Just tell me things. I’m not a mushroom.”

Zenigata and Lupin both choked. They knew the rest of that saying:  _ kept in the dark and fed shit. _

“You’re certainly not a mushroom. But we’re all growing here,” Zenigata said.

“But we’re still learning too. Especially me! I’ve never had a kid before, at all, and never thought about having one. You’re halfway to adult, Ami. You have all these ideas and wants and a history we weren’t there for. We’re still learning who _ you _ are and what you need.”

Zenigata watched him; it was a Lupin performance, but this one at least came from the heart. He was sincere, even if he was probably overselling it a little. Ami, with her stunted social development, wouldn’t clue in. He was sure she’d learn in time, as smart as she was, but in this she’d been hampered by the life she’d been given.

Now it was their job to give her a better one.

“What are you trying to say?” Ami asked, her expression gentling from blazing sun into something warmer, softer. 

“That we’re family,” Lupin said. “It’s not anybody’s idea of normal, I don’t think, but-- it’s still family.”

Zenigata watched Lupin for a moment, and realized he sincerely believed that. There was no guile there, his boyish charm built on lies was, for once, touched with real idealism. He wanted this. He built his little criminal clan, eschewing the enterprise that his father had built on the bones of colleagues, associates, and children that disappointed him. He had survived and had stolen a family, piece by piece.

Was it whole now, Zenigata wondered, looking at the empty spaces at the small table. They’d need to expand, he realized. Have enough for daughters and grandchildren, friends and lovers. 

They’d need a big house in Chiyoda to gather close to the land he’d been raised in, the land he still loved. They’d need a home in Lyon, in the home of Lupin’s heart and the country that he always returned to in the end, where they would both work and play within. They’d never be a tame, sculpted garden; their flowers would grow wild and free, overrunning and overlapping into each other.

“Zenigata?” 

Lupin’s voice broke Zenigata from his moment of clarity, and he blinked back to the now. “Sorry, what?”

“You just got this look,” Lupin said, as both he and Ami looked at Zenigata. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yes. I just-- I just realized something,” Zenigata said as they both waited for a proper answer. “Just that -- we’re still growing, you know? We need space for it, is all. It can be hard to do that, and still be close, to take care of each other. But we will. We made promises, after all.”

Lupin arched up one brow, and Ami mirrored his expression after a moment.

“What promises is that, Pops?”

“That we’ll take care of each other. That we’ll share, and that means we’ll struggle, but-- everything struggles to grow, you know? Trees grow crooked when they’re not cared for as saplings, old trees can crack and fall if left to get sick with no care. Weeds spring up and steal the strength of the flowers and the grass.”

“A plant metaphor? After the last few months, Pops?” Lupin’s brows were both up now, but Ami seemed to settle.

“Maybe that’s why it’s the right metaphor,” Ami interjected, looking at Lupin for a single, intense moment. Then her eyes dropped to the food on her plate, and her voice softened. “Because the wrong thing grew where it wasn’t supposed to. Wasn’t until it was pulled out did anything else find room to grow.”

“That’s it exactly,” Zenigata said, nodding once with a sharp jerk of his head. “Now we’re growing something new. Something better. Ripped out the bad roots and started actually tending what we have.”

“God, I love it when you’re dramatic,” Lupin laughed.

“You’re one to talk,” Zenigata shot back with a grin.

“Both of you are awful,” Ami said, but at least her smile had returned.

“Right. So -- we’ll all aim to grow up and grow better together, alright? We’ll start trying to communicate better. Act like the odd little family we have. But you still need to respect our boundaries. Nothing on our phones, okay? Or anywhere else. Let us have our space to grow, too.”

Ami nodded, seemingly satisfied by that. Then she asked thoughtfully, “Am I an aunt, then?”

“You are,” Zenigata said with a smile. 

Ami gave a ponderous nod, as if she were tasting this information, then digesting it and finding it filling. Then she took up her knife and fork and cut into her crepe.

Lupin slid his hand under his table, slipping it briefly into Zenigata’s hand, out of sight. 

Zenigata squeezed his hand briefly, and then they both dug into their meal, letting conversation shift into something kinder, softer, warmer. How was school, what did Ami want from her summer, Zenigata would love to take her to Japan in the fall, if things panned out right. 

So much had grown over the summer; Zenigata was looking forward to the fall, with it’s cooling air and blazing, brightly colored leaves. He wanted to settle into something comfortable, having something to keep him fed and warm through the winter. When they reached the spring again, Zenigata was certain they’d have all new chapters in his book, and all new flowers sprouting in the garden back in Chiyoda. 


	10. Epilogue: Space Within the Margins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just part of their life together; the rest is written in the margins.

**The First Job**

Prepping for the heist, Jigen was busy loading up his kit when he heard Lupin’s voice through the door to his room at their current flop house. He was speaking Japanese, and since Goemon was here in the building, that meant he could only be talking to his lover, Zenigata Koichi, who was also the co-pilot on this particular job.

This was working out well, Jigen had to admit. The old man was devious and trickey, and where Lupin let pride and accomplishment drive him from treasure to treasure, Zenigata was a hunter, a baying hound with the scent of evil in his nose. Lupin would distract, disable, and Zenigata would get his opening to dive in, and tear the operation open with ICPO as his fangs. 

Zenigata hadn’t balked on some of the requirements on the division of the take. The fact that they were getting justice against a warlord who trafficked in all sorts of terrible things was good enough to allow a lot of the man’s wealth to fall into Lupin’s hands. After all, this piece of shit had child soldiers in his armies, drug money in his coffers, weapon deals on the side. If Zenigata hadn’t stipulated that he needed to take him alive, Jigen would have been happy to put a fifty calibre hole in the guy.

Lupin burst out of the room as Jigen packed his quick loaders, shouting, “We’re good to go! I’m gonna go make sure everything we need is in the car. Then, it’s over the border and into Morocco!” 

“You sound pretty excited,” Jigen said, sliding another bullet into place.

“I am. I found some things last night, and I think the guy has a vault Pops doesn’t know about. The radar and infra-red turned up a separate building in the compound -- we’re gonna check on our way in if that bunker’s filled with what I think it is.” 

“Are you sure we’re supposed to be taking more than our one cup of sugar?” Jigen asked, brows going up. “Won’t Pops be mad?”

“Oh, no. That’s part of the deal,” Lupin said as he grabbed his bag. “If there’s extra goods to be had, they’re ours. We’ll deal with art redistribution as necessary, especially if there are any major cultural artifacts. But any extra sucrose is all ours!”

Jigen nodded. He trusted Lupin to have worked out the details with Zenigata. After all, they’d spent over a month alternating between working out the bedroom kinks and the professional kinks in their relationship, and Lupin was confident that everything was on the up and up.

Goemon came into the hideout as Lupin left it, laughing loudly about sweet, sweet theft.

“He seems happy,” Goemon noticed.

“Like a pig in shit,” Jigen said with a nod. The last quick loader finished, he packed the last of his kit up. “We ready to go?”

“Yes,” Goemon said as he waited by the door for Jigen, watching him with his dark, unreadable eyes.

As they walked down the hall together, Goemon asked, “...are you happy, Jigen?”

Jigen smiled a little, and let his hand touch Goemon’s; the other man hooked his pinky to Jigen’s, just for a single brief and wonderful moment of warmth.

“Yeah,” Jigen said, flashing a grin as they headed to the garage. “I’m getting there.”

  
  


**Three Months Later**

Zenigata looked out his window as snow began to fall outside the ICPO warehouse office. It was Christmas Eve, and the place was dead except for the few scant agents that didn’t celebrate the holiday. 

He’d grown to hate Christmas in France, which is why he always chose to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They were much different holidays in Japan - Christmas Eve was romantic, meant for couples to have lovely evenings together. The next day was for families and gifts -- and for Zenigata, it was his birthday.

Nobody had cared about his birthday for a long, long time, least of all Zenigata himself. He just powered through, counted another year off in his head, and forgot about until the holidays started winding up again to remind him. He had small regrets about being so private about certain details with his men, but so many of them were in awe of him he thought that to give something like a birthday away would make him another flawed, aging mortal instead of the unstoppable force they followed into battle against injustice -- and Lupin III.

Agent Baumann, a German Jew who often joined him on the Christmas shifts, roused him from his concentration in the warehouse, cataloguing yet another pile of Lupin evidence - they piled up so fast, and there was always so much of it. Broken gadgets that he sometimes back-engineered to make his own versions, photos of crime scenes and stolen goods, and of course, calling cards. 

“You might want to go back to the office,” Baumann said, as he stopped by Zenigata, who sat cross-legged among a pile of paperwork and evidence. “I saw someone come by for a late night delivery.”

“What?” Zenigata’s brows furrowed.

“I just saw something on your desk. Envelope. You know the type.” Baumann said, glancing down at the work he was doing.

Zenigata looked at the spread of calling cards, and then sighed.

“Think it’s Lupin?” Baumann asked. 

“Christmas Eve is low, even for him,” and he meant it. He didn’t know if Lupin even knew the date of his birthday, but he wasn’t above announcing a heist for Christmas Day, or Boxing Day, or whatever day, on Christmas Eve. “But it’s definitely possible.”

Privately, Zenigata grumbled in his heart.He thought for sure the very rich take from the first co-planned job in their new relationship would be enough to tide Luipn over a little longer. But Lupin was Lupin, and it was part of the agreement. Not every crime was going to be one that went in Zenigata’s favor or gave help to ICPO in secret. Compromise was part of every relationship. ‘I can’t be good all the time,’ he’d said, and Zenigata had caved. 

It was a compromise that satisfied them both. Staging a chase was one thing. Lupin threw him curve balls and went on unagreed upon tangents, sometimes taking out another target as a personal bonus. But a real chase… One he didn’t know half the details of, made the hunter in him eager. If this was Lupin’s Christmas gift, then he’d give it all he had.

“I’ll go take a look,” Zenigata said, dusting off his pants as he got up. “Can you take over here?” 

“Of course!” Baumann nodded, giving him a thumbs up. “If it is Lupin, make sure he spends Christmas locked in a cell.”

“Will do!” Zenigata said as he pulled on his coat, and all but ran for the exit. He didn’t look back. 

Once he was gone, ‘Baumann’ pulled out his phone and dialed the sole number on it.

“He’s on the move,” Jigen said in his own voice, “so you best get ready.”

“You think he’ll like the scavenger hunt I left him?” Lupin’s voice was bright and happy at the other end of the line.

“It’s leading him to you, so-- obviously, dumbass.”

“Alright. You and Goemon enjoy Paris, alright?” Lupin was happy to spread the love; everyone deserved a holiday, including his partners. “I’ll see you after New Years, as promised!”

“Enjoy yourself, lover boy.” 

Lupin laughed, _ghu-hu-hu_ coming down the line. “Don’t worry, we will!”

**Three Years Later**

“I want to take us public,” Lupin said over dinner.

Once he was done choking on the rice he’d inhaled at the very suggestion, Zenigata blurted, “You want to do _what?_ ”

“I want to take us public,” Lupin repeated. He’d rehearsed this for days, in secret. He’d gone over it, time after time after time, as it was his newest heist. He was going to steal Zenigata’s bachelor status away. 

Zenigata looked Lupin up and down, as if he might find a camera to be pranked with, or maybe some cocaine on his collar to prove he was high as a kite as to even suggest such a thing. “So you want me to quit my job and run off with Lupin III?”

“Oh no!” Lupin shook his head vigorously, before he pointed his chopsticks at Zenigata. “I want you to have a whirlwind romance with Edgar de la Cambriole, the wealthy and eccentric bankroll behind your ward, Ami Enan, her maternal uncle!” 

“ _What?_ ” Zenigata laid down his chopsticks and put his hands on the table. “You want me to romance you, in public, as your cover identity?”

“I’ve spent years on Edgar,” Lupin explained, having to put his chopsticks down so he could gesture between the two of them without throwing any food about. “I already had him in the wings, and he turned out just right to be the guy to take care of Ami. He’s solid, he’s eccentric and wealthy, and most importantly he’s built off a lineage of identities from the Lupin family. I have cousins and friends and so on as ‘Edgar.’ He’s watertight!”

“I don’t know about this, Lupin…” Zenigata started slowly, clearly indulging in a lot of reservations. “It’s very risky.” 

“That’s what adds some spice to it,” Lupin said, leaning forward a little bit. Couldn’t Pops just let him have this? He knew he could do it. “But, it’s not as risky as you think. Besides, I’ve been dropping hints that he deeply admires you, and is very happy with how well you’ve bonded with his niece. He’s related to Ami on the maternal side - a cousin, but jokingly called an uncle. I checked it all out. Most of her maternal relatives are dead or ancient. We’re in the clear, Koichi, I promise.” 

Zenigata picked up his chopsticks and poked his food around his plate. “I guess so.”

“Besides if you’re nervous about it, you’ll align with your public persona - blushing and anxious whenever someone shows interest in you,” Lupin’s grin turned wicked, all broad teeth. “Then things will get better, and the whirlwind romance will go through and we’ll elope.”

Zenigata’s mouth sagged open again as Lupin steepled his fingers and waited. 

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘elope’?”

“Of course I did!” Lupin said, smile somehow getting wider. “I can’t marry you without a paper identity, and keep all those special rights, or set up a proper adoption with all of us and Ami without that, can I?” 

Zenigata squeaked. It was an undignified sound.

Lupin came around the table, and knelt down as was proper. “I don’t have a ring, yet. We’ll pick one out right before we elope.”

“You’re mighty confident about this!” Zenigata blurted, flustered. He had to put down his chopsticks again, his hands were shaking so much, fumbling and nearly dropping them in the process. 

“We have made it work for _three years,_ Pops,” Lupin stressed as he took the man’s hands. He held them tight as they trembled in his grip, before he pressed a kiss to Zenigata’s rough, scarred knuckles. “You’re my partner. I want us to have stability, and for you to be able to be seen in public with someone who loves you on your arm, and have a proper family to come home to.”

“You’re proposing,” Zenigata blurted, eyes wide and pupils blown. “You’re on your knee in my kitchen and you’re proposing.”

“So what do you say, Koichi?”

“Lupin, don’t be stupid.”

“What?” It was Lupin’s turn to make an undignified sound. “Is that a no?”

“It was yes the moment you said ‘elope’,” Zenigata grumbled, grabbing for Lupin’s hands and pulling him up into his lap. “But it’s going to be work, Lupin. A lot of it, even just the set up!”

“I know,” Lupin said as he let his forehead rest against Zenigata’s. He was suddenly sealed up in a tight embrace, but couldn’t think of anywhere better to be. “I know. But I’m ready to do the work if you are.”

**Six Years Later**

There was blood and sweat dripping into Zenigata’s eyes, making it difficult to see. His salt-and-pepper hair was damp with both, gluing his hat to his head. It didn’t matter: he didn’t really need his eyes to dig at the rubble with both hands.

“Sir! Sir, come away! The place is unstable!” His men were calling from across the hall, too treacherous and trapped for them to make it across, especially as a group. 

“I won’t leave him to die here!” he shouted back, and pulled again. Softer, he spoke only to the man who he knew waited beneath the stone. “I won’t leave you, Jigen. I won’t. He’ll be lost without you. Who’ll watch our backs, if you’re not there?”

Exhausted, battered and bloody, Zenigata finally caught sight of a hand, gone pale under dusky skin. Zenigata hollered in brief joy, and then threw more rubble to the side. 

“You’ve got to go home to Goemon, you damned idiot,” He said, before he finally got to where the stone gate had come down, shattering in it’s hidden archway and bringing half the doorway down. He had room enough to fit beneath it, bracing his legs. Jigen was half unburied, but unresponsive and pale as death. “To Lupin. For me. You absolutely _cannot_ die for me, you hear me? That’s not your damned job.”

Grappling hooks started to fly across the rickety walkway that connects the two platforms across a chasm. Lupin had gone down there, but he had every hope that the thief had survived. He knew he’d heard the pressure-release and soft whir of the zipline watch and the crack of stone, so he had faith that down there, Lupin was waiting-- or finding an alternate path out.

Jigen was right here, dying before him, and he had to prioritize the right man.

When he looked back, he realized what his men were doing on the tightly anchored lines: laying down, one after the other, on the ropes. A human bridge, to cover where the walkway might be trapped or crumbling. A dangerous but quick solution to the gap between them.

“What’s the rule!” one man called out.

“Nobody gets left behind!” the others chroused.

“What does nobody mean?”

“Nobody means nobody! Even scum get to see the light of day!”

Tears joined the blood and sweat on Zenigata’s face, chasing away sorrow and despair, and the salt tasted like hope on his lips.

“See, Jigen,” he said to the still man, cradling Jigen’s hand in his for a moment. “We’re going to get you out, and safe, and he’ll come and save you. Just like you do for him.” 

Jigen’s thready pulse answered under Zenigata’s fingers, heart still beating, steady if weak.

  
  


**Nine Years Later**

‘Edgar’ sat in the waiting room, twiddling the ring on his finger. Zenigata hated hospitals, and he wasn’t exactly a fan, either. This hospital was the worst of them all -- they had history here. 

It’d been hard to get inside, too. Only the ID that proclaimed him Edgar de la Cambriole-Zenigata got him in the door. Zenigata, for a variety of reasons, hadn’t changed his name legally, which was fine by Lupin, and their romance wasn’t well known outside of France. Japan was still behind the times when it came to queer rights.

Ami slumped in the chair next to him, pillowed against his shoulder, her red hair tickling his jawline, making him want to wriggle or scratch an itch. He kept his hands in his lap.

When Haruka walked in, he wasn’t even vaguely surprised.

“Still hasn’t done that paperwork, eh?” he said quietly.

“You know how he avoids it,” Haruka said as she approached Lupin and his daughter. She jerked her chin toward Ami, keeping her voice low. “How’s she doing?” 

“She nearly lost a second father,” Lupin told her. “So about as well as can be expected.”

“She’s a good kid,” Haruka admitted, and Lupin wondered how much that had cost her heart to say. 

“The best,” he says, and it’s the first thing to fill his heart with happiness in the last twenty-four hours. But reality pushed it down, compressing it into a tiny corner of his chest. “You going to give me his prognosis?”

“They don’t even know if he’s going to keep the leg,” Haruka said, looking back at the double doors she’d come through. “Even if he does, he’s never going to be able to do field work again. He’s going to need multiple surgeries. Months of physical therapy.”

Lupin licked his lips, suddenly parched. They cracked like century-old papyrus. “I see.”

“His career is over.” Haruka looked at him for a long moment, till Lupin’s heart was pounding in his throat, refusing to let him break the silence first.

Haruka said, a hammer against glass, “You knew this could happen.”

Lupin gave a little nod. “I did.”

Haruka looked away, letting her hair shield her face from his scrutiny. “Are you glad?”

“Glad?” Lupin’s brows knitted up, a worry line furrowing between them. He was bewildered, but it was quickly giving way to simmering outrage, lips curling in a snarl. “The hell does that mean?”

“That it wasn’t-- it wasn’t with you. That he was on loan, working on something that _wasn’t_ Lupin?” she asked, finally looking up at him. “This is one thing you can actually say you’re not responsible for.” 

Stricken, Lupin turned his head as if she’d slapped him. His mouth craved water like he was stranded in the Sahara, but he still whispered: “God, yes.”

  
  


**Twelve Years Later**

The warm voice of Zenigata’s husband was close to his ear when he woke. “Hey, handsome. Get up.”

“Lupin, it’s _Saturday_ ,” Zenigata rolled over and hid his face into the pillow. Lupin threw the drapes open.

“It’s past ten,” Lupin told him.

“It’s winter break _and_ a Saturday,” Zenigata mumbled into his pillow.

“Just because you’re not teaching doesn’t mean you can laze about all day,” said Arsène Lupin III, retired master thief and current professional lazy ass. “Especially not with the kids coming.” 

The bed dipped under Lupin’s weight, and his hand found Zenigata's shoulder. Zenigata rolled as he pushed, squinting when the sunlight lanced his sleep-heavy eyes. “Ah, that’s what this is, isn’t it?”

“They’re your grandkids,” Lupin said, leaning over to kiss him despite the musty morning breath. 

“They’re _our_ grandkids,” Zenigata grumbled, but then threw his arms around Lupin and tugged him down, kissing him like he meant it. “Get me my leg and I’ll get up.”

“Lefty’s right by the bed already,” Lupin said, and kissed him again. This time he broke away, a sly smile spreading across his face. “I thought you’d want to take a shower first, though, so I waited on mine. Don’t want to meet the kids stinking of last night’s wild monkey sex, yeah?”

“Oh, so you’re going to join me?”

“Somebody’s gotta wash your furry back,” Lupin said, before he tugged at Zenigata’s hands, and drew him up. “C’mon, Koichi. We don’t have that much time, and I want to make good on it before they get here for lunch.”

Zenigata sat himself up, swinging his leg -- whole on the right, and a stump on the left, just above the knee. Getting onto his leg was easy, getting it connected took a few moments. From his phone he selected basic walking for the gait, and then took his naked, sleepy self to the bathroom. It had to come off there, but he didn’t want to lean on Lupin for a short walk, or search for his crutch.

When the water was running hot, they got clean, got dirty all over again, and then tried again to get clean. Finally, refreshed and actually scrubbed, they stumbled out into the bedroom and dressed. It was eleven-thirty-five when they made it downstairs to start with the little luncheon they had planned. With Toshiko and her husband vacationing in London and the grandkids staying with their Ojiisan in Cambridge, the house was about to get boisterous and privacy was going to dwindle.

It wasn’t just that it was winter break, though. The big deal was Zenigata’s next birthday. The big six-oh, sixty years on this damned planet. It was going to be a moderate affair at home, with family and friends, and then a second one, with the secret family he’d built next to the other.

As Zenigata stood and cooked at the stove, thinking over the schedule for the next week, he realized Lupin had stopped setting the table and was standing there with drinking glasses in hand.

“You just going to gawk, ‘Edgar’?”

“I just love it when you’re both freshly fucked and domestic. You glow!” Lupin laughed as he put the glasses on the table. But then he came closer, sliding his arms around his husband from behind and nestling in against his back.

“Jigen and Goemon going to join us?” he asked. The three flat walkup that Lupin and Zenigata owned in Cambridge, so close to the University that Zenigata now taught in, housed Lupin and Zenigata on one floor, Goemon and Jigen on another, and the third was rented out for extra income - not that they needed it, but Zenigata enjoyed being a useful landlord. Teaching criminology at Cambridge kept him busy - and brought him both prestige and a nice paycheck - but he always preferred to have hands on work. Keeping the building maintained was basically a nice hobby.

“After Toshiko leaves. They’ll come by for dinner.” Lupin replied, nuzzling between Zenigata’s shoulder blades. “Man, I love winter break and your cozy sweaters, but I miss you looking like a hot professor half the time.” 

“Shush.”

“But _sensei…_ ” Lupin gripped his love-handles and wriggled even closer. “You’re so hot in your waistcoat and glasses!”

“I said shush.” Zenigata couldn’t keep the smile from warming his voice as he broke away from both the counter and his husband to slide a casserole dish into the oven to bake. 

Giving in to Lupin’s bratty whining, Zenigata turned and kissed his husband in their kitchen, surrounded by knickknacks and secrets. There were doors in this place that were hidden and things with meaning that no one would ever understand, notes in the margins of their lives and pictures that could have been better classified as evidence. It was home, with all the unsaid things hidden in plain sight.

As Lupin carded his fingers through hair that had mostly gone silver, Zenigata pulled him tight and indulged another, longer kiss. It was good, here in the margins. They had this one thing to themselves; there were parts of their lives they shared with others, fragments of truth that some people saw and others didn’t, but moments like these wouldn’t go down in any books.

The doorbell rang, and Zenigata broke away, before he kissed his beloved’s brow and then nudged him away.

“Go answer the door, I have onion-smell all over my hands.”

“The hands you were just grabbing my ass with?” Lupin grinned, waggling his eyebrows.

“Just go answer the door, Lupin,” Zenigata said, and Lupin finally obliged him. 

As the voices sang out _Grandpa Edgar!_ at the doorway and Toshiko greeted the husband she’d never know the truth of, Zenigata smiled, scrubbing his hands. 

It was a good life. He was glad he’d finally gotten to live it.


End file.
